 Just a short blog to thank all of you who attended my session at TFSI yesterday. As promised I am uploading the session resources here for you to download. Please do have a browse around the rest of the site whilst you are here. There are lots of links to blogs on progress, progression, second-order concepts and substantive knowledge in the blog bar on the right. Alex Blog posts which may be of particular interest:
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Creating flight paths to replace levels Year 7-11 - the impact of the new GCSE grade descriptors7/17/2016 So with very little fanfare, the grade descriptors for the new GCSE grades 9-1 were released on Friday. Those schools who have opted to use these as a progression model, assessment system and general replacement for both NC Levels and GCSE grades must be delighted that they can finally start implementing their systems. In this blog I want to take a look at how these grade descriptors can be utilised from Years 7-11 to provide a clear and coherent flight path for pupils in history. Using the grade descriptors to create a flight path Many schools for instance have opted for the following basic flight path:  As such, the grade descriptors will help to define what this path might look like for pupils in lessons. They could be used as part of the reporting process, discussed with parents and form targets for written feedback….
“Don’t worry too much about your subject knowledge,” I was advised by one senior member of staff during my training year “just make sure you are two pages ahead in the textbook.” Even at the time I remember thinking this was very odd advice (although a great relief when I looked at the catalogue of historical content I was meant to master by June). As it turned out, this was some of the worst advice I would ever be given as a trainee teacher. Every time I felt a bit overwhelmed by planning for a lesson, my subject knowledge development would be the first thing to go on the back burner. Why bother spending time learning the ins and outs of the French Revolution when I could spend my time better creating a novel card sort or envoy activity? Not enough time to do even the most rudimentary research? Set them off on a Google-based FOFO activity – problem solved!
Needless to say, many of these lessons ended up being incredibly dry, poorly conceived, and of little use to anyone. It took a long time and a lot of courage (largely as a result of being the only history teacher in a small school) to realise that the lessons where I had excellent subject knowledge were always the best ones. Even so, I had been set back a long way (as my ex-colleagues noticed when I tried to teach the French Revolution at the start of my THIRD year of teaching – I was even mistaken for an NQT because of this.) I have long been a fan of Tom Bennett’s no nonsense approach to behaviour management. I have recommended Bennett’s blog many times to trainees and NQTs nervous about expectations in the classroom (as you will see from these pages). As such, there are many things I like about the ITT behaviour report (one of the long-awaited responses to the Carter review) which was published on Wednesday:
So far, so vanilla. Yet I also feel there are a number of fundamental issues with the approaches suggested by Bennett and his team. The following points are very much a response to the report and to Tom's blog "Let's fix this together" published today. |
Image (c) LiamGM (2024) File: Bayeux Tapestry - Motte Castle Dinan.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
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