Screams of Work

I have never ever found a scheme of work that suits me.  In fact, I hate practically every scheme of work ever invented. There, I have said it. It is out there, so feel free to judge and criticise me. I don’t hate what they represent; I just hate the bleeding things and the obsession people have towards them.  Somewhere in the dark recess of your teachery brains we have this notion that if everything is encapsulated in a couple of printed sheets of paper we are safe, secure and confident. I am starting a new topic: phew, I feel better as have some markings on a piece of paper.  As we use garlic and crucifixes to ward off vampires, we also have schemes of work to ward of OFSTED. Look, here’s our scheme of work. Be gone, it's in our scheme of work.  

Every summer it is the same. Endless streams of teachers plan their schemes of work. They plan every second and every space in a series of lessons to microscopic detail. I have seen pristine booklets produced to support the SOW (I am now going to abbreviate from now on) and they have lovingly produced memory-stick bursting PowerPoints to support each lesson. I have seen the military detail that teachers have planned lessons weeks in advance of the term starting. Right, it is week 4 so in the third minute the students must be completing the card sort that links to the lesson in week 2 and week 8.

I plan. I write plans and for years I have written SOWs. Each new topic has its own SOW typed and planned by me and my fingers. I know what I am going to do and when I am going to do it. However, each year the same thing happens. I get to about lesson two and I realise that everything needs changing. The resource I spent four days laminating are not needed, because I could cover it in one sentence in a lesson. The work producing a SOW does not seem proportional to the time saved. I can guarantee there are teachers out there who have spent days writing a SOW, and if they were stubborn like me, they will teach them irrespective of the fact they don’t work.

This year my department are trying something new. We have tried an approach recommended to me by a friend and I am indebted to them for this idea. We have transformed our SOWs and turned them into ‘Learning Journeys’.  The problem with having SOWs in department is that you need to have billions of the things for everything to be covered in a department. Each year group might have a number of sets. Each year group will have a number of topics. The list of SOWs needed then doubles and quadruples. This then further changes when new curriculums are introduced or the exams are revised.
 

Here’s what one of our Learning Journey’s looks like:

Learning Journey

Year 8: Horror Writing

	Teaching structure	Big question / objective	Resources
1	Features of horror	What are the typical features (character, settings) of a horror story?
2	Gothic horror	What makes gothic horror different to horror?
3	Tension	How do writers create tension?
4	Narrative perspective	Why do horror stories select a first person narrative instead of a third person narrative?
5	Senses	How do writers make the reader identify with the protagonist of the story?
6	Settings	How important is the setting in a ghost story?
	Atmosphere / mood	What can you do to create a particular mood in your writing?
7	Choice of adjectives	How can adjectives suggest something about a place?
8	Personification	How can personification be used to make a setting creepy?
9	Character	How can I create a believable character?
10	Similes / metaphors	How do writers use figurative language to make writing effective?
11	Showing not telling	What is scary?
12	Action - Verbs	How can verbs be used effectively to create drama?
13	Action – Sentences	How can I vary the sentences that I use?
14	Use of dialogue	How do you use dialogue effectively?
15	Paragraphing	What is a paragraph?
16	Structuring a story	What different ways can a story be structured?
17	Dramatic devices – foreshadowing / dramatic irony / tricks	How can I manipulate the reader’s thoughts and feeling?
18	Clichés	How can I make my story original?
19	Planning	What should I write?
20	Drafting	What do I have to do to improve?
21	Demonstrate skills	What have I learnt?

  


A teacher’s role often is to provide a narrative to the learning. Or, simply an order of aspects to learn. The beauty of the Learning Journey is that the narrative is up to the teacher, but the content is the same between staff. I teach differently to other people in the department I am in, yet this way I can enable the department to have the same points of learning. There can be some form of consistency. Too many times have I junked whole aspects of a SOW, because it didn’t make sense to me or how I want to sequence a lesson.

The 21 points are just things to cover. They could be covered in one lesson or a number of things can be covered in one single lesson. The coverage is up to the teacher. There is just an understanding of what they cover. Now, the beauty of this is that some things will apply for your Set 1 only, and some will apply only to other sets. But, rather than keep the Learning Journey like a SOW and only reviewing it when it comes to the next time we teach the unit, we are going to evaluate the journey and review which components relate to which set and what needs adding or removing.

I am really enjoying planning this way and I feel the rest of the department agree with me. It’s a simpler way of planning which places a stronger emphasis on what you want the students to learn or experience. Plus, teachers don’t have to translate the SOW for their group. Too many hours of my life have been wasted on thinking about how I am going to dress up a lesson to be interesting to a student. This way, I am focusing on the learning first and then the way to deliver the learning second. Teaching can become easily cluttered and often the way dominates the what.

Oh, and with this way of planning is quick.

Thanks for reading,

@Xris32  

Whack-a-mole results analysis!

So, the results are in and the number crunching begins. As I said in my last blog, whatever the results some action will take place. But, what action should take place? There are so many actions that could be done in reaction to a set of results. That’s it, we are never being examined with that board again. That’s it, we are never doing that again. That’s it, we will definitely do that thing again. Inaction is bad. Action is good. Everything is about the action-plan. Do you have an action-plan? What is you action-plan? What are you doing about such and such?

I am in the process of developing an action-plan for improving results. I was happy with them, but there are still things to improve. My brain is formulating ideas and thoughts to improve things. I am scrutinising the exam paper and looking at things question by question. But, here’s the rub (as in me rubbing my head): the peaks and troughs of the exam marks reflects only one cohort. The analysis of results would help the current year group immensely if they knew the issues on the paper. Yet, in a form of alchemy we apply the issues and problems with the next year group to go through the exam system. It is as if they are and exact match. Supposedly Timmy in Year 11 is like Johnny in Year 10. It is as if we are dealing with the same student, but we have changed the name.

We are also trying to infer the teaching quality from an exam paper. We know Ofsted do it. Bad results (not accurately) reflect ineffective teaching. We look at what teaching worked and what didn’t. To be honest, that can be like me deciding the colour of the paintbrush a painter used in a masterpiece. We can guess. We can interpret. But, can we really know the truth? 

Of course, a lot of this is looking at patterns. We are looking for ‘trends’ or ‘patterns of behaviour’ like someone looks at tea leaves. I see that you are going to marry a man with a beard who looks after ducks – no, I mean, your results will improve if you read more newspaper articles. However, isn’t the problem endemic in English. The problem-fix issue. We look at the problems and then we look for solutions.  

If I am honest, a lot of my teaching revolves around this. I take work in and look for patterns in the mistakes. I then teach the students how to avoid those mistakes. I build the problem-fixing into every part of my teaching. Hell, I even name the blog after it. But, doesn’t this ‘mind set’ actually hinder progress.  If our focus is always on the problems, then aren’t we likely to neglect the bigger things. If I obsess over the use of apostrophes for a whole lesson, I could be missing out on developing the students’ use of cohesion in a text. One thing gets selected over another. Its priority changes. It moves to the top of the peaking order. You might think: the problems are very important or students will not know how to improve. However, isn’t our teaching primarily concentrated on this aspect?

This week, I was reminded of a conversation with Jill Berry at the fantastic Pedagoo event organised this year in London. Our discussion led to, strangely, problem solving. I assure you I wasn’t using Jill as an agony aunt – which I think she would be good at, if the need arose.  For the life of me, I cannot remember the book cited by Jill, but she discussed this idea of how we deal with problems. It was simply: start with the successes and look at those first and identify what worked well there and then apply that to the issues.

For me, it is a great way to look. It avoids that pessimism that often occurs when looking at work. These students can’t possible do blah and blah. How do they expect us to get them to do X when they can’t event do Y? But it also prevents that rose-eyed optimism that follows some work. These students are just so naturally gifted. Instead, it gives you a wider picture of what could be done.

One of our successes has been our Literature results. So, instead of looking at the issues I am analysing what made the Literature results so successful. What worked so well for the students? Was it the texts we used? Was it the approaches in teaching we used? Was it how we taught Literature over time? Was it the teacher’s enjoyment of the topics? Was it the students’ understanding or enjoyment of the topics?

Once identified, I can then explore the use of this in relation to the issues or weaknesses on other parts of the exams. Rather than say, a lot of students did not do so well on Question 8, so we need lots of practice and more focus on Question 8, I am saying: The way students explore poetry in lessons reflects well in the exams, so let’s get us exploring non-fiction texts in the same way. Ultimately, this could avoid the infamous ‘whack-a-mole’ that happens in education. Here’s problem. Here’s a strategy. It is fixed. Here’s another problem….

Results time can be a bit like the dodgy wine stain on the carpet you can’t wash out. You might put a lovely rug over it or move the coffee table to disguise it. Nonetheless, it is still there. We might phrase things like: ‘I know that this happened, but look at X – isn’t it brilliant?’ We become our very own spin doctors. What if the lovely rug could teach us something about the dodgy wine stain? Ok, you have to admit some analogies don’t work. No matter how much you try.

Ultimately, it boils down to the ‘what’ and the ‘why’, but changing them to the successful elements.

What went wrong? Why did it go badly?  

What went well? Why did it go so well?  How can we repeat this with other areas?

 

The last three questions are the ones I will discuss with my department and form the basis of any action-plan.

Failure often is the driving force for change in education. What if success was the driving force for change? This works well, so let's apply it to something that isn't working so well.  

 Thanks for reading,

 Xris