Learning Through Song

I think that children can learn in many different ways, song being one of them.
Here's one example of learning the circle formulae:

You Can Lead A Horse To Water...

You can hold its head under to force it to drink but you’ll either annoy or drown it. Targets are the bane of a teacher’s life. Target grades or levels are predicted using a graph based on what they’ve done in previous exams, as well as other stuff like whether they are entitled to free school meals. In theory a child can take a key stage 1 exam at the age of 7 and from that level you can predict what they are going to get up until GCSE when they are 16.

This system is flawed for various reasons, but once a target has been generated it’s very difficult to change, especially downwards, although it is very easy to move it upwards. Schools are given targets of A* to C grades by the local authority which they have to try and meet, with improvements year on year so that the government can say that standards are rising.

The problem is that the predicted grades are only really accurate for 50% of children, meaning that they aren’t accurate for 50%. This is not so widely known, but appears to have little bearing on local authority battering of school senior management, who in turn batter heads of department, who in turn batter teachers.

When a teacher receives the target grades for their class in the first year of GCSE they can usually tell within a few weeks whether the child is capable of reaching that grade. As standards are being forced up centrally, target grades seem to get more and more unreachable, therefore demoralising students and teachers alike.

There is also the fact that a C grade is regarded as a pass (all grades are regarded as a pass, but C and above are seen as “proper” passes). The child who has no intention of taking mathematics, or any other core subject such as English, beyond GCSE level will therefore be happy with a C grade, whatever their target may be. The amount of times that a teacher hears “I’m don’t need maths for what I’m going to do” is depressing, and most students don’t realise that for almost every job application you need to put down what you got in English and Maths at GCSE or equivalent.

Strangely enough English and Maths always struggle to hit their targets as every student has to take the subject whether they like it or not, whereas the subjects the students choose, or their options, tend to hit their targets because the students actually chose it and it would reasonable to assume, enjoy that subject.

The longer my teaching career has gone on, the less motivating targets have become from both sides of the desk. The students are expected to know what their targets are in each subject (Ofsted will ask apparently), but generally make little effort to achieve it. And who can blame them? If you know your target is very tough and almost insurmountable, most will not bother. There will always be a occasional child who will have a go but not expect to achieve it – if they do, it’s a bonus.

The main problem is that children and their ever changing attitude to their own education are not an exact science, means that predictions are always going to be flawed. It seems that predicted grades are here to stay, but at least make them realistic.

Unpaid Overtime Anyone?

What a lot of people don’t realise is that a teacher only gets paid for the time that they could be in the classroom. That would be from about 9am to about 3.30pm, minus the lunch break of 45 minutes or so (we don’t get paid for that). We are paid a good hourly rate for those five and three quarter hours, depending on how long you’ve been doing the job and what pay scale you’re on, will be around £30 per hour. But in order to do the job properly a teacher has to work extra hours.

Now there’s no point grumbling about the pay if you are a teacher. The salary is very well advertised as it is for all public services (although nurses do have every right to moan about their salary), so if you don’t like the wages, do something else! One should expect to do a little unpaid overtime as a teacher for the following reasons:

·         You get loads of holiday.

·         The working hours are pretty short, so stop complaining.

·         If you want to keep your job, then you’re going to have to do it.

How many non-teachers would opt to perform unpaid overtime though? Very few would be my guess. The trouble is that the time a teacher is expected to work outside of school hours is growing enormously. Extra classes have to be put on either before or after school, or at lunch time where you could be paid for it (roughly half the hourly rate you get for classroom time), assuming you regularly get 15 students or more, which isn’t ever going to happen because they’d rather be outside with their mates. Who can blame them? So would I.

When I first started teaching I was getting in at 7.30am and leaving at around 5pm. I was also taking marking home with me. This was partly because I was inexperienced and didn’t have a bank of resources built up over the years. I currently work about the same hours, but now don’t normally have to take marking home because I can fit most stuff in the time I’m at school.

I still have to do things at home – mostly IT based as the computers at school run on gerbil power and you could do a passable copy of the Bayeux Tapestry in the time it takes to load a webpage, assuming that site hasn’t been banned on a whim that week.

I’m not saying I mind putting in the extra time (unpaid), but when people say that I’ve got it easy, maybe they should give it a go. Teachers need the long holidays to recover from the term times! Let’s be honest, there would be a lot of teachers who’d be doing something else if it weren’t for the holidays.

The trouble is that this time we used to put in outside of curriculum time is now being taken up by extra lessons or revision sessions that have become almost obligatory for teachers. Time is therefore being taken away from teachers for planning, when at the same time the powers within teaching want to see “fun” activities in lessons, and “fun” activities take a lot of planning.

The numbers don’t add up I’m afraid.

Lesson Observations - you've got to love them!

I’m in my eleventh year of teaching and have been observed teaching in an official capacity at least eleven times. That’s one per year, minimum for all you non-mathematicians. I have had varying experiences of the process, but essentially this is how an observed lesson compares to a normal lesson:

Observed Lesson

Normal Lesson

Find the latest lesson plan pro forma off the schools’ system. Type an in-depth lesson plan making sure to mention differentiation, any students that have particular needs, any health and safety issues, describe precisely what your objectives for the lesson are, point out what all, most and some of the class will be able to do by the end. On top of that, break down each individual minute of the lesson, saying what’s going to happen. Think of something to do on mini whiteboards that each individual student writes on. Try to make it relevant, although not always necessary to do so. Assess prior knowledge of the students with some carefully planned questions, maybe using the whiteboards again. Try to put across the message in a fun way, hopefully getting the students to interact with the objectives by coming up to the board, singing a song etc. Write a totally new worksheet that has lots of pictures on and looks really “funky” and engaging. Invent a game so that they remember the lesson and really enjoy it (in theory). Assess how much each of them have learnt during the lesson in whatever way was suggested in the most recent study. Plan for the students to assess each other’s work, whether it will be of any benefit to them or not. Plan to set a homework, whether it is the correct lesson for homework or not. Rehearse the lesson in your head so that you know pretty much exactly what you’re going to say. Photocopy and cut stuff up in readiness. Time to plan: 2-3 hours

Write the topic or a lesson title in the space designated for that lesson in your planner. Can you think of a starter activity? Maybe a couple of questions to find out what they know from previous lessons, although you have a rough idea of what they’ve been taught before (this is different to what they actually know, I hasten to add). Have a look at the text book to see what they want to cover in that particular topic, and look at the exercises to see if they’re any good. If not, find a worksheet that has better or more interesting questions. Work out the answers to the questions you are setting, so you don’t have to do them in your head and possibly look stupid. Think about playing a relevant game, if there isn’t one that springs to mind, don’t worry about it. If it’s the lesson where homework’s set, then either find a relevant worksheet or set an online one (the wonders of the internet!). Do some photocopying and paper/card slicing if you need to. Time to plan: Approx. 15-20 mins

You are then judged by the observer as being outstanding, good, satisfactory or unsatisfactory according to Ofsted criteria, or the observer’s perception of those criteria and whether, in their eyes, you achieved them.

And to what ends? I reckon in my 11 years of teaching I have found approximately 2 lesson observations any use to my teaching. These lessons were OK, not outstanding, not unsatisfactory, but the useful bit was that the observer (2 different ones) pointed out some good parts of the lesson, then gave me some tips on how I could have improved the lesson and my teaching in general. They did it by making me feel good about myself initially before going onto to the parts I could work on. Good management that: the praise makes one far more open to suggestions of improvement. Basic Management 101.

The rest of the observations and subsequent feedback have been thoroughly demoralising. The observer has come into the lesson with a judgement already in mind, and then proceeded to tell me how rubbish I am for half an hour before giving me a good or satisfactory grade. Their justification for this judgement: I didn’t teach like they would have done. Pathetic! They then try to justify the judgement with some guess about what Ofsted would have thought think. Even more pathetic! As if most teachers really care about those bureaucrats.

Lesson observations are totally false and a waste of good teachers’ time and energy. If you don’t like the way they teach you shouldn’t have employed them. I’m not saying that teachers can’t improve, I know I can, but 30 minutes of being told you’re useless isn’t going to inspire anyone to do anything about it. What’s more laughable is that one observer will say good, the other will say bad – the whole process is subjective.

I have now opted to do exactly what I normally for a non-observation for the following reason: I might as well spend 20 minutes planning a lesson I’ll be slated for instead spending 3 hours for the same result. It’s a no-brainer in my eyes.

What's the point in homework?

Contrary to popular belief, teachers aren’t keen on setting homework. It has just taken me an hour to set homework for all my classes for this week, which doesn’t sound like a very long time, but that’s not the end of it. There are photocopies to be made, an electronic version needs to be available for those who misplace the sheet or who have hungry dogs. When it’s due in you have to check that everyone’s done it (very rarely does this actually happen) and then mark it, either as a class or by taking the books in.

I reckon a single piece of homework takes up about 90 minutes of my week, certainly if I mark it personally, and if you multiply that by the 6 classes I take – that’s 9 hours! You may question why I don’t mark everything personally, and this is mainly due to the latest educational fad that is “peer assessment” / “Assessment for Learning”, or in English: the students mark each other’s work and point out positives and bits their peers need to work on. It does work in general, but very few teachers actually know how to peer assess properly, probably me included.

What purpose does homework perform? The traditionalist will say that it gives the students to practise what they have learnt in class without access to the teacher, forcing them to totally understand what’s going on. I would buy this argument if the students in general actually did this. What tends to be the case now is one of the following things:

·         A note at the bottom of the homework sheet saying “Sir, I didn’t get it”, “No idea” or something along those lines.

·         Just a load of answers with no working out, clearly copied off a classmate.

·         A note from a parent or carer saying something like: “Please excuse Johnny for not doing his homework, but he was unable to log onto the computer, and his gerbil was feeling off-colour, and we were in Basingstoke this weekend, and Johnny needs some downtime at the weekends to stop him from being so stressed etc”. Computer?! It was a sheet! What’s his gerbil got to do with it? I set the homework a week ago, the fact that he left it until the last minute is his problem, so being away at the weekend is irrelevant. Stressed – do me a favour!

I heard Irish TV presenter say something along the lines of this recently: “Homework – they should ban it. The kids don’t do it, it’s the parents who actually do the stuff whilst their children look on non-plused.” The fact that parents end up doing the homework isn’t a problem if the child is learning how to solve the problems at the same time. But how many parents just do it to keep the school off their backs? I don’t reckon that many, but I couldn’t give you any statistics on the matter.

In my view homework shouldn’t be compulsory. It should be set, but only done by those who want to do it. I think you’d be surprised as to how many actually completed it – about the same as do now. The reason for this is that the amount of time it would save chasing up and detaining those who simply refuse to do it would lead to far better teaching in the classroom as teachers won’t be stuck in a silent room with the non-doers. They could be producing resources that would make kids go deeper into the learning, consolidate their knowledge and hopefully make them enjoy their education a bit more.

I know what you’re thinking:

·         Lazy teacher can’t be bothered to mark books. Not true (although marking is really boring, it’s part of the job), the homework would still be planned and those who completed it would get it marked. Ask a student how useful they find their teacher’s marks – even if you put the most insightful comments down, a lot of the children totally ignore it.

·         How do you assess how they’re getting on? Nowadays you have to assess students all the time – we’ve got data coming out of our ears on all students, so that wouldn’t be a problem.

In fact, teachers could give far better feedback to the few that actually handed the homework in and those whop couldn’t be bothered haven’t wasted any time doing school work and get down the local park and hang around with their friends even quicker. It’s a win-win people!

What have Ofsted ever done for us?

No, they didn’t build an aqueduct and certainly didn’t bring peace to education. They cost the taxpayer around £200 million per year apparently and are staffed by former senior management who needed a new challenge having got as far as they could within schools. The reports they compile are seen as the be all and end all as far as the performance of a school is concerned, both by the public and by local government. But can their judgement be trusted and should we pin all our opinions of a school to Ofsted’s mast?

An Ofsted inspection lasts a few days, depending on the size of the school. The inspectors notify the school, giving them a little time to prepare and then arrive shortly afterwards with clipboards in hand. They will talk to the school’s headteacher and other senior management and then go around and see some parts of lessons, rarely whole lessons, just snapshots. All schools will try to guess when Ofsted are going to arrive and try and get ahead, but ultimately no-one knows until it happens.

From their findings having visited various classrooms and comparing them to in-house observations of lessons, they make a judgement on the standard of teaching. Is this fair? Some topics are covered over a period of lessons, so will seeing bits and bobs really give the inspectors a proper idea of whether the students are making sufficient progress and engaged? The answer is “no”, but what they will be able to see is whether the students are controlled and therefore in an environment where they are able to make sufficient progress.

One ought to bear in mind also the recent background of the inspectors. On the whole they are former senior staff, and anyone in teaching will know that senior staff are quite a long way removed from the classroom in general. Most headteachers I have worked under have had no timetabled lessons, with their deputies only teaching a fraction of a normal timetable. Surely you can therefore assume that the Ofsted inspector has not taught a full teaching timetable for a minimum of 10 years.

The last 10 years in education has seen an enormous change in the behaviour of students. Teachers now have just one sanction, namely a detention, but can only set a significant detention with 24 hours notice. Students are only too willing to tell their teacher what “rights” they have, and more and more, their parents will back them up. This attitude was not so prevalent when the Ofsted inspector was a classroom practitioner (if they ever were) and they will therefore find it difficult to empathise with a teacher’s plight.

Teachers are put under a lot of pressure to pull out all the stops by senior staff. They must produce detailed lesson plans (something that is impossible to do normally) and “take risks” in observed lessons, and by definition a “risky” lesson could go one of two ways: brilliantly or awfully. This means that the Ofsted inspector won’t see what happens day-to-day within that school, they will see a show. Is this conducive to a balanced judgement of a school?

Are the Ofsted inspector’s judgements of your lesson really worth listening to as their teaching experience is now outdated and therefore irrelevant? If the inspector was a practising teacher, then maybe, but there are factors involved that they are never going to see, no matter how much data they look at.

It's fine to be innumerate

I’m a maths teacher at a secondary school in England, and have been for over 10 years. Every parents evening you can guarantee that at least one parent will start with the line “I’m useless at maths, so there’s no point my child asking me for help with their homework”.

Why is it that people are quite happy to admit to being innumerate?

I’m sure that these same parents don’t walk up to their child’s English teacher and say “I can’t read or write, so there’s no point my child asking for help with their essay”. It’s funny how the two subjects, of equal importance on the curriculum and in life, are thought off as polar opposites when it comes to admitting talent or lack thereof.

It’s a constant battle for the maths practitioner as many offspring learn attitudes towards things from their parents. My mother is not a big fan of parsnips, so I assumed that I wouldn’t like them either. It wasn’t until I’d moved out and I thought I’d experiment with the popular root vegetable that I realised that actually, I rather like them. This may seem a frivolous comparison, but if a child is told that someone they respect hated mathematics, then that child will also have a poor attitude towards the subject, and the battle is lost before it’s even begun.

Maths is a taboo subject, perceived to be really difficult, but as I have often said to both students and parents, most mathematics is just like an assembly line, where at each stage a small part of the solution is added, until finally one ends up with the whole solution.

Everyone knows the curriculum, it is available on government websites and pamphlets, probably every school website, and if you still can’t find it, your maths teacher should be able to lay their hands on a copy fairly easily. You can guarantee that most of the curriculum will end up on the exam paper, and let’s face it, the questions are always essentially the same with the numbers changed around a bit.

I believe that essay subjects are far more difficult for the following reason: the student has to develop a theory and argue that theory coherently in a piece of writing, using relevant passages from the text they are writing about and convincing the reader that what they are arguing is, in fact, the case. That is a far harder skill to master than anything a student would do in high school maths lessons.

The skill in succeeding at mathematics is not achieving a correct answer, it’s choosing the correct process by which you can arrive at the correct answer. If pigeons can be trained to perform a process and be rewarded, then surely humans can do the same, with their reward being the correct answer and a good grade in mathematics.

It should therefore be far more embarrassing to admit that you are no go good at mathematics than it is to admit to being poor at English. Shouldn’t it?