HWRK Magazine: Issue 17 - November 2021

educational magazinefor teachers the essential magazine

HWRK NOVEMBER 2021 / ISSUE 17 / FREE HWRKMAGAZINE.CO.UK

written by teachers for teachers

GettinG Started With

inStructional coachinG

also inside: • View From The CharTered College oF TeaChing • eFFeCTiVe QuesTioning For eal sTudenTs • how i would TeaCh... iTeraTiVe design

• adhd in girls: The hidden send • shakespeare For all • don’T diTCh The highlighTers!

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“NOT ALL TREASURE IS SILVER AND GOLD.” Financial incentives for teachers might not be the panacea they seem. Headteacher Sam Strickland explains why we should be wary of the latest Government plan to recruit teachers in Science, Maths and Computing for challenging schools.

don’t ditCh the highlighters

PEDAGOGY

PEDAGOGY

in association with

By Sam Strickland

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how i would teaCh… iteratiVe design

“Highlighted notes don’t tell students what they can and can’t recall, instead it provides a false sense of confidence and the ‘illusion of knowing.’”

DON’T DITCH THE HIGHLIGHTERS!

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How a low-utility strategy can support a high-utility study strategy

By Kate Jones

View from the Chartered College of teaChing

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The purpose of highlighters is to highlight information to be learned. A problem with this (and a significant problem at that) tends to be that students can’t always successfully identify and recognise what information is essential and what isn’t; therefore all notes become brightly coloured and underlined, with the highlighting task itself losing its purpose - when everything is highlighted, nothing is highlighted.

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FEATURE

TEN PRIORITIES FOR THE NEW EDUCATIONAL MINISTERIAL TEAM

Highlighters have long been the go to revision resource and a staple part of a study toolkit for a lot of students. Despite the popularity of highlighter pens; teachers often advise against their use or at least try to warn students how multi-coloured highlighted notes are a poor proxy for learning.

Just because content has been highlighted and underlined, it does not mean the content has been learned.

Parents often view highlighted notes as a visible indicator that their child is studying and learning material successfully but highlighted notes can be deceptive.

Highlighting doesn’t always pay off, much to the frustration and confusion of students and their parents.

not all treasure is silVer and gold

There are many reasons why students enjoy highlighting and become over reliant on this study strategy. Highlighting can make

As a new ministerial team begin to settle into their work at the Department for Education, the ‘to-do’ list is monumental. I shall be meeting with Ministers in the next few weeks and wanted to share here what I think their top ten priorities are that need addressing urgently:

class notes appear bright, colourful and visually very appealing.

Highlighting doesn’t require much mental effort or challenge, it’s easy to do. Highlighted notes don’t tell students what they can and can’t recall, instead it provides a false sense of confidence and the ‘illusion of knowing.’

A classic example is an actor that will use a highlighter to show the lines on a script they must learn. Once their lines have been highlighted this does not mean the actor has automatically learned their lines; it simply shows the actor what lines they need to learn. The actor will need to read their lines and then eventually test themselves until they can recall lines fluently and confidently without the prompt of their script.

The work of John Dunlosky, Professor of Psychology at Kent State University in Ohio, explained how not all study strategies are equal; with research suggesting some are simply more effective than others . Any revision is better than no revision but the amount of time and energy invested into revision should be invested into effective and efficient study strategies. Unfortunately, for fans of the highlighter pen the review carried out by Dunlosky and colleagues showed that this strategy was rated as low utility in terms of its effectiveness.

CURRICULUM

In contrast to highlighting are effective study strategies, although not always as popular or as widely used, retrieval practice and spaced practice.

Retrieval practice involves the act of recalling information from long term memory; this can and should be carried out in lessons but it is also very straightforward for students to do outside of the classroom independently.

Is it that simple?

No. As we all know, the primary timetable is a squeeze and Design Technology is often one of the subjects that gets squeezed into one of days or weeks if the children are lucky. Additionally, it is a subject that many teachers feel less confident in planning and teaching. Looking at the above process can feel pretty daunting, especially if you know you’ve only got 1 hour per week in a couple of half terms to actually do it. Can teachers and children really be expected to complete that whole process in every unit of DT work?

Retrieval practice focuses on how to study whereas spaced practice focuses on when to study. Spaced practice involves exactly that, spacing out study sessions. Study should be carried out little and often over a period of time as opposed to massed or last minute practice known as cramming.

A process over time The answer to the above question is that we don’t have to complete the whole process every time we teach a DT unit. We can introduce new aspects of the design process over time, gradually building children’s repertoire of design skills.

Dunlosky does suggest that students can still use their highlighters but this must not be their sole or main method of study. Firstly, students need to be shown how to use highlighters effectively; how to identify key and relevant information that they need to learn. Secondly, and more importantly, students need to understand that highlighting should only be done at the beginning of the study process.

The secret to successful study is what happens next; how the highlighted information is used to support spaced retrieval practice.

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A good idea is to colour code highlighting. Whilst studying history, for example, the following information can be categorised and colour coded using highlighters; • KEY HISTORICAL DATES • KEY EVENTS • KEY INDIVIDUALS • KEY TERMS • CAUSES • EFFECTS Once that information has been highlighted it can be used to

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For example, younger children might not identify a problem. Instead, teacher may present them with a problem that the children can solve in their own designs. Or, teachers may provide some simple analysis of a variety of existing products, making explicit strengths and weaknesses so that children can begin to plan their own product with those pros and cons in mind.

create flashcards; with a key term on one side and correct definition on the flip side. Another idea would be to create a quiz based on the highlighted content for students to self test at a later date.

Professor Robert Bjork states, ‘Using your memory, shapes your memory. Using your memory, changes your memory’ . Regular retrieval practice can result in students being able to recall content with greater ease and confidence in the future.

Unlike highlighting, retrieval practice will explicitly show students what they can and cannot recall from long term memory. This identifies gaps in knowledge, therefore students know where to focus their next stage of revision.

Highlighters don’t deserve to be ditched but they do need to be understood and used in a way to support effective study strategies, ensuring learners are revisionready and become successful students.

The key to working towards having children complete the whole design process (perhaps in upper key stage 2) is for teachers to fill in the gaps, providing children with resources and input that allow them to focus only on particular parts of the sequence.

Which parts when?

Being deliberate and mapping out when children will first encounter the various aspects of the iterative design process will ensure that there is consistency and progression across the DT curriculum.

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By Professor Dame Alison Peacock

CURRICULUM

English

discussion, I also take time to address these initial misconceptions, focusing my attention on those who may struggle even more if they struggle to move away from that initial thinking.

ShakeSpeare For all Teaching Shakespeare can be a very challenging task and even more so with particular students who struggle with the language and the context of his works. Here, Zoe Enser offers her tips on how to make lessons on Shakespeare accessible for all students.

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By Zoe Enser

Tackling something as challenging as Shakespeare can be a daunting prospect. The alien language, the unfamiliar context, and the sometimes-complex narratives, with subplots and a constantly changing variety of bit players littering the stage, even the most proficient reading can find the prospect of exploring this overwhelming. If you are a student with an SEN, or have literacy needs or English is a second language, this can feel even more confusing, and the temptation to avoid this challenge is understandable. However, I am a great believer that Shakespeare’s plays have enough inherent value to mean they should be available to all, especially if we want to then discuss what it is which does, or does not, make his plays important to us.

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Here are some ways that I teach Shakespeare in a way which means all students, regardless of any additional needs they have, can gain from the study of his plays: 1) First, I begin by ensuring I have a good understanding of what the specific need is or what barriers Shakespeare may present to particular students. This is not much different to how I would approach any class, as the more I know their starting points

shakespeare for all

or different requirements the better I can ensure learning can take place.

In many ways studying his work can be a great leveller though. Regardless of starting points, all may well find exploring his work a challenge and will be encountering something brand new, even if they have studied some of his plays before. All will experience something which they find difficult and will need to scratch their head over and just because some may find aspects of reading trickier than their peers, this doesn’t mean they won’t be able to examine plot, theme, character, and language in his work.

The starting points of the students doesn’t just mean knowing reading ages and fluency, although that can be useful, but it means exploring what they may already know, what they may have already experienced, and what misconceptions they may have picked up on their journey to my classroom. Films like Bill or programmes like Upstart Crow are excellent entertainment, and in both cases the writers have done very interesting things with their knowledge of Shakespeare’s history and writing, but they can very easily have taken students off into a range of potentially problematic directions. So, whilst I access where students are through questioning and

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2) The next part of the process is to think carefully about the steps and stages we need to go through, often beginning with exploring and embedding knowledge of the plot and character. I identify where the hinge points may be, those moments in the plot where if they don’t understand what has happened, the meaning may become tangled. For some EAL or SEN students these misunderstandings can come thick and fast if we were to dive straight into a performance or reading, so I will offer short summaries either at the start of the sequence of learning or after watching or reading a scene to support all. I also plan carefully how the plot will unfold for them, so I can ensure they are not overwhelmed by too much information at once.

spotting adhd in girls: the hidden send “All will experience something which they find difficult and will need to scratch their head over and just because some may find aspects of reading trickier than their peers, this doesn’t mean they won’t be able to examine plot, theme, character, and language in his work.”

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It’s been suggested for example that Albert Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci both had classic ADHD, although we’ll never know for sure…

As the world-leading animal behaviourist and autistic Temple Grandin says, “The world needs all kinds of minds”.

As tricky as it is negotiating through a neurotypical world, I wouldn’t trade my neurodivergent brain. I experience and see the world differently from my neurotypical counterparts, and for me, whilst this has sometimes meant hardship, it has, with support also brought success.

I wouldn’t trade my ADHD for anything.

“Hyperfocus is the ability to zero intensely on an exciting project or activity for hours at a time. I personally love it. Unfortunately, most of us with ADHD struggle to direct this”

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CONTENTS 05. EDITORIAL: Why Making Sense Of Mock Results Isn’t Easy...

FEATURES 07. VIEw FROM ThE ChARTERED COLLEGE OF TEAChING

Ten Priorities for the new Educational Ministerial Team 11. GETTING STARTED wITh INSTRUCTIONAL COAChING

What can we expect from instructional coaching and how can we embed it in our schools?

17. FIVE ThINGS YOU ShOULD KNOw AbOUT YOUR ChRONICALLY ILL COLLEAGUES

What can we do to support our colleagues with chronic illness?

21. NOT ALL TREASURE IS SILVER AND GOLD

Is a financial incentive enough to fix the recruitment and retention crisis?

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PEDAGOGY

CURRICULUM

28. DON’T DITCh ThE hIGhLIGhTERS

40. ShAKESPEARE FOR ALL

Highlighters aren’t a silver bullet, but is there a way to use them effectively?

Laying the groundwork for all students to succeed in their study of Shakespeare’s works

30. EAL QUESTIONING STRATEGIES

44. LET’S TORK AbAwT SPELLING

What should we be doing to support EAL students with questioning in the classroom?

Why spelling in English is so complex

35. ThE IMPORTANCE OF NAILING ThOSE ROUTINES

Quick transitions can save you hours over the year. Here’s what to focus on.

48. hOw I wOULD TEACh… ITERATIVE DESIGN

Tips on how to teach the process of iterative design, with limited curriculum time

EXPERIENCE 56. SPOTTING ADhD IN GIRLS: ThE hIDDEN SEND

60. TEAChING IN ThE MIDDLE

Spotting and supporting students who present with the symptoms of ADHD

What can we learn from middle schools?

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CONTRIBUTORS WRITTEN BY TEACHERS FOR TEACHERS

Nick Wood @Mr_N_Wood

Nick Wood is Assistant Head Teacher at a middle school in Worcestershire.

He has taught in middle schools for 21 years, been Head of Maths and Head of Year 7. He now leads on curriculum and CPD.

Professor Dame Alison Peacock @AlisonMPeacock

Chief Executive of the Chartered College of Teaching.

Tabitha McIntosh

Beth Southern

Tabitha McIntosh is an English teacher and KS5 subject leader at a Greater London comprehensive.

She is also Type 1 diabetic, dangerously over-educated and terminally online.

Beth Southern is the founder of EAL Hub and Inclusion Hub, as well as an experienced EAL consultant and SLE in EAL. She has experience of working across both primary and secondary schools, independent and state sector and within international schools.

@TabitaSurge

@Bethan_Southern

Sam Strickland

Kate Jones

Shannen Doherty

Neil Almond

Sam is the Principal of a large allthrough school, the organiser of ResearchED Northampton, a successful author and is a leading voice in the current conversation in education. His most recent book is Education Exposed 2: In Pursuit of the Halcyon Dream.

Kate Jones is Head of History at The British School Al Khubairat, Abu Dhabi. Kate is also the author of Love To Teach: Research and Resources for Every Classroom and the Retrieval Practice collection. Kate can be found on Twitter and Instagram.

Shannen is a senior leader and class teacher at a primary school in London.

She loves all things Maths and enjoys getting nerdy about teaching and learning. Shannen’s debut book, 100 Ideas for Primary Teachers: Maths, came out in May 2021.

Neil was a classroom teacher for 5 years before leading Teach and Learning in a small academy trust.

Now he is a deputy headteacher on Thornton Heath. He regularly blogs and speaks at educational events around the country.

@strickomaster

@KateJones_teach

@MissSDoherty

@Mr_AlmondED

Caroline Keep

Tom Sherrington

Aidan Severs

Zoe Enser

Caroline Keep is a neurodiverse educational technologist, data scientist and award winning teacher. The co-founder of the UK’s largest national maker festival to stimulate Science, Technology, engineering, Art and Maths for young people rolled out nationwide through the UK libraries.

Tom Sherrington is an education consultant and author. He writes the popular blog teacherhead. com and his books include The Learning Rainforest and best-seller Rosenshine’s Principles in Action.

Most recently he co-authored Teaching WalkThrus with Oliver Caviglioli.

Aidan is currently a primary deputy head in an all-through school in Bradford. In January he will be working with teachers and leaders as a consultant, having set up Aidan Severs Consulting. You can book him to work with your school and read his blog articles at www.aidansevers.com.

Zoe Enser was an English Teacher for over 20 years and is now working as the Specialist English Adviser for The Education People and an ELE (Evidence Lead in Education) for the EEF (Education Endowment Foundation) in the Kent area. She is also the co-author of Generative Learning in Action and the upcoming CPD Curriculum: Creating the Conditions for Growth, both written in collaboration her husband, Mark Enser.

@Ka81

@teacherhead

@AidanSevers

@greeborunner

HWRK MAGAZINE PUBLISHED BY HEALTH NEWS qUARTERLY LTD 5 Hackins Hey, Liverpool L2 2AW, UK E: enquiries@hnqgroup.co.uk T: 0151 237 7311 EDITOR Andy McHugh PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Alec Frederick Power DESIGNER Adam Blakemore MANAGING DIRECTORS G Gumbhir, Alec Frederick Power Legal Disclaimer: While precautions have been made to ensure the accuracy of contents in this publication and digital brands neither the editors, publishers not its agents can accept responsibility for damages or injury which may arise therefrom.

No part of any of the publication whether in print or digital may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior permission of the copyright owner.

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EDITORIAL:

WHY MAKING SENSE OF MOCK RESULTS ISN’T EASY “Correlation is not causation”.

I’ve been thinking of using this as a mantra.

Far too often, even those of us who are aware of its truth can fall prey to this logical trap. After all, how many times have you tried out a new teaching technique, with students seemingly succeeding as a result, only to find out later on that they only really made progress because of your newfound enthusiasm, rather than the clever new strategy you used? The key question is, how do we separate the truth from the noise? We need to ask the same question about mock exam results.

As we move into “mock season”, we should be especially mindful of the correlation/ causation problem. The whole point of Autumn mocks is to find out what students do or don’t know, what they can or can’t do and to work out what I need to do next, in response to their performance.

Making Valid Inferences is the name of this game and it’s a lot harder than it seems.

Just imagine this: a student answers a “describe” question with a one-line response, when they should be writing a detailed paragraph or two. What should we make of that as their teacher?

• Have they misunderstood the amount of detail required?

• Do they have gaps in knowledge?

• Is their understanding accurate, but shallow?

• Did they merely guess the answer correctly without actually knowing it?

• Is their response just a regurgitation from a revision sheet?

Without an accurate answer to these questions (and more besides), our next move may not have any impact. So what should we do?

Well, let’s look at the responses from the whole class: • Do many other students struggle similarly on that question?

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• Are other students having issues with that same exam “skill”, e.g. do they evaluate instead of describe?

• Did they all run out of time?

back to when you taught that topic: how strong was your subject-knowledge? And are you the best judge of that?

Or is it actually more complex than that?

Sometimes there’s a mixed response from different students across the class. Do students from one group perform better or worse than others? A change in seating arrangements might help. But then again, it might not.

Maybe it was the weather that day. Did a wasp fly into the room during your explanation? Were your students in a bit of a rush after being late from PE? Was there a funny smell from the farmer’s field next door that students kept getting distracted by? Did you (without a hint of irony) forget to set a recall homework task on the topic where they underperformed?

To tackle post-mock issues then should be a collaborative effort, not siloed off for a Head of Department or a Key Stage Coordinator to deal with alone. As a departmental team, it is worth discussing not just “how well did they answer question 8”? but also “how well did we teach the students to be able to answer question 8?” By posing the question in this way, we are much less likely to make assumptions about the student’s answer and much more likely to find the true reason for their response. We should discuss and model our own inclass explanations, how we scaffold and how we assess as we teach, checking for misconceptions and encouraging detail and nuance in students’ responses.

A Question Level Analysis can be helpful, but it won’t always provide the answers that we as teachers need. A good QLA can still only give you a limited amount of information. The information you actually need often comes from your memory of teaching that topic at the time.

Having these discussions also stops us from letting ourselves off the hook. Much of a student’s attainment is down to things that occur beyond the walls of our classrooms and this is why holding teachers solely accountable for exam results is highly problematic. But we are responsible for how we teach and this impacts student responses in exams in arguably the most significant way. If we have taught it well, the students will typically perform well in assessments.

What was it that helped or hindered your teaching? This might be a resource issue, a timetabling one, a staffing conundrum, or something on a whole school level, largely beyond the control of the class teacher or Head of Department.

There are schools across the country, whose cohorts are classed as “disadvantaged” in various ways, but who also routinely outperform other schools whose students “have it easier” (at least on paper). This comes down to the teaching.

It might even be that your own knowledge just wasn’t strong enough on that topic.

That’s an uncomfortable thought, isn’t it?

Well, it shouldn’t be. And we can address it without stigma, shame or professional embarrassment. In fact, I’d argue that if we are teaching a challenging curriculum, then from time to time we should fully expect it and actually embrace it in our practice, both individually and as a department. Think

As Dylan Wiliam puts it, “Every teacher needs to improve, not because they are not good enough, but because they can be even better.” So, scrap “correlation is not causation”. My mantra should simply be “Keep improving my teaching”. Everything else is just noise.

In other words, did the problem occur during the teaching, rather than during the exam?

Andy McHugh

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We work tirelessly to change the lives of those affected by bullying and we know we make a difference. We see it in the way young people engage in our projects, how we empower them to Make a Difference and how they develop confidence and learn new skills.

By developing a positive ethos across a whole school/organisation community, we can create an environment that meets the emotional, academic and social needs of pupils and staff. Creating an anti-bullying and respectful ethos is a powerful way to Inspire Change.

Our Youth Ambassadors are a dynamic team of young volunteers working together to help deal with the issue of bullying. They are committed and dedicated and all have a passion to Make A Difference in their local communities. The programme is open all year round and you can join wherever you live and whatever your background and interests are.

FEATURE

TEN PRIORITIES FOR THE NEW EDUCATIONAL MINISTERIAL TEAM As a new ministerial team begin to settle into their work at the Department for Education, the ‘to-do’ list is monumental. I shall be meeting with Ministers in the next few weeks and wanted to share here what I think their top ten priorities are that need addressing urgently:

By Professor Dame Alison Peacock

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1. Stop acting like the pandemic never happened.

The world has changed. We have suffered isolation through lockdown and the mental health and welfare needs of our children and their communities have become more stark. We urgently need a Secretary of State who lobbies powerfully and effectively on behalf of children, teachers and schools. Our schools and colleges need to be funded properly to ensure recovery in the fullest sense, to keep everyone safe and to reward the profession for the vital work it does. It is incumbent on all of us to listen to the issues raised by our young people in the Children’s Commissioner’s ‘Big Ask’. They value their families highly and worry about how support for family can be provided, they seek places to play and socialise safely within their community, they prioritise health and wellbeing, high quality schooling and meaningful careers. Our children and young people seek a variety of pathways to achieve (not just university), they believe in social action, in equity and fairness for all.

2. The review of SEND provision is long overdue.

This has been in the ‘too difficult’ basket for too long. There are an increasing number of children and young people who meet the criteria for additional support but services such as CAMHS, Educational Psychology and Speech and Language are too limited, with longer and longer waiting lists. There is a crisis when provision does not come close to meeting need. Inclusion and support for all young people with SEND requires investment and a generous view of learning and achievement that offers hope and support for all.

3. Provide certainty about exam arrangements for summer 2022.

Although there are many who would advocate for assessment reform our children, their teachers and families all yearn for certainty in the immediate future. Work with exam boards, Ofqual and schools to ensure that exam guidance is clear and consistent. At the same time publish a workable alternative so that everyone is clear about a plan B.

4. Thank the profession and then thank us again relentlessly.

Teachers and school leaders need your appreciation not your judgement.

The profession has worked tirelessly to provide schooling both online and

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face-to-face whilst also leading local community support with compassion.

At the beginning of the pandemic when providing adequate food supply was a priority, society looked to schools – leaders, teachers and support staff did not disappoint. Recognise that society’s challenges are most keenly felt within schools – the impact of poverty and poor housing on education cannot be overstated. It is time to reform the accountability system, to remove league tables and instead to prioritise individual teacher professional learning as the means to celebrate success. Schools and colleges need to be understood as centres for local improvement.

5. Allow time for the Early Career Framework reforms to embed.

The investment in our early career teachers is good policy designed to improve retention and to build a career pathway towards excellence. Such an ambitious set of reforms requires culture change within schools. Listen to the teething problems and be courageous about responding so that further improvements can be made to a curriculum that is too generic. Subject specialism matters and tailored support, particularly in the second year, will further enhance the quality of what is on offer.

6. Work with the school sector and universities to make the proposed ITT Review fit for purpose.

There is widespread dismay at the threat of a heavy-handed approach to reaccreditation. Work with experts from within the sector to avoid the risk of every provider being punished for the faults of the few. We need brilliant initial teacher education to entice colleagues into our wonderful profession. The best of our ITE providers already offer this.

7. Ensure the new NPQs hit the mark.

It is encouraging that the DfE is providing funded study places for teachers and leaders to develop their careers. Please help small schools with this policy offer by providing funding for release which may otherwise be impossible for schools to afford. Let’s ensure that there is a clear plan for continual refreshment and review of these new qualifications as currently there is a risk that they appear too prescriptive and too narrow.

8. Consider long term reform to curriculum and assessment arrangements post 16.

Listen to the intelligent, measured debate taking place across the sector. There is a society-wide dissatisfaction with highstakes GCSEs that result in up to a third of young people failing school. There are several Commissions debating assessment and alternatives that are not only more inclusive but also offer greater depth and appreciation of learning in the broadest sense. Employers, parents and crossparty groups are keen to learn lessons from the pandemic and to build back a more equitable, sustainable approach to education.

9. Reform primary assessment from baseline measures right through to KS2 SATS. It is time to draw a halt to the ill-conceived Reception baseline and to high stakes KS2 SATs. Invest instead in a new assessment body that can offer assessment tools and materials for ongoing low-stakes formative and summative measures across a broad curriculum throughout the primary years and into KS3.

10. Work in partnership with all schools and colleges – not just academies.

We need a ministerial team that communicates willingly with the full spectrum of education providers and professional associations. It is time to openly take the side of teachers, to champion their work in the media and to celebrate the amazing resilience of the pandemic ‘heroic’ generation of young people. We need hope for a better future and the most obvious place for this begins with our early years settings, schools and colleges. The profession is keen to work with you and to support your policy agenda as we move into a new era. Please take every opportunity to listen in order that we can take a once in a generation opportunity to truly work together meaningfully.

Our team at the Chartered College of Teaching is keen to enable teachers to connect through collaboration, to be supported in building expertise and to be celebrated for their contribution; thereby gaining the status and respect afforded to other professionals across society. We look forward to working with you.

Professor Dame Alison Peacock Chief Executive of the Chartered College of Teaching

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FEATURE

GETTING STARTED WITH INSTRUCTIONAL COACHING The concept of Instructional Coaching appears to be gaining currency as a tool for supporting and driving professional development in schools. Tom Sherrington explains just why this is exciting and offers his thoughts on how to get started.

By Tom Sherrington

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s with many other ideas in education, instructional coaching has been around for a long time but, for multiple reasons, it has recently found new prominence in the discourse around CPD in the UK, with lots of people writing blogs about it, running training events and generally promoting the idea.

In my view this is excellent news because it means that, as a system, we’re thinking harder about how to improve the quality of teaching without relying on heavy-handed observation protocols, checklists and nonnegotiables; it means we’re finally breaking free from the legacy of graded inspection lessons which still casts a shadow across the whole profession; and it means more people recognise that their showpiece CPD events are not remotely sufficient for driving improvement: something significant needs to happen in between.

Across the system, there are several different definitions of instructional coaching in use, some more precise and prescriptive than others. I favour a fairly loose, flexible definition. Essentially it is a process whereby a knowledgeable, experienced practitioner establishes an ongoing coaching relationship with a teacher colleague, engaging in a series of iterative discussion and observation cycles

over several months, supporting them and guiding them as needed, so that they secure gains in student learning through embedding more successful strategies and habits into their practice. It’s a very different concept from the standard diet of a few ‘formal’ lesson observations with their detailed feedback sheets – often written by different people several months apart or the ‘feedback in your inbox’ approach where leaders give feedback to people without even talking to them first.

Instructional coaching is about supporting continual incremental improvement. It’s not a soft or light approach but depends on forming a professional relationship and dialogue over multiple interactions to drive it forward. There’s a balance of guidance and support which allows schools to talk about the processes in a universal whole-staff manner rather than seeing it as something only for the least proficient teachers or, conversely, the most advanced and experienced.

In my definition which borrows largely from Jim Knight, a leading practitioner in the US, instructional coaching is highly adaptable. It can be facilitative, where a teacher has the capacity to self-reflect and diagnose fruitful areas for improving their practice alongside good bets for the action steps they will take to address

them. Here the coach can be a sounding board, keeping things on track but essentially putting the teacher firmly in the driving seat. However, it can also be quite directive where a teacher isn’t yet able to accurately identify where problems or solutions lie. Here the coach needs to support the teacher to see where things can improve and to suggest specific techniques they might deploy in response.

The skills that an instructional coach needs are largely around having both the knowledge of what effective teaching looks like, de-constructed and codified into actionable steps a teacher can take – along with the interpersonal communication skills needed to select the most productive point along the facilitative-directive continuum.

In my work I always point people to two key texts to support their understanding of this process.

The first is Practice with Purpose by Deans for Impact – subtitled The Emerging Science of Teacher Expertise. They set out a five-point process that is necessary for securing teacher expertise and I think this underpins the value of the instructional coaching process. Here’s my commentary on it:

PUSH ‘JUST’ bEyonD

Teachers only improve if they make a conscious, intentional plan to walk into a classroom and teach differently to how they did before – otherwise they can’t and don’t improve. Good processes need to get under the skin of this, motivating teachers to try things; to make a change.

SPECIfIC GoAlS

It’s important to practise specific aspects of teaching. you improve in specific ways, not general ways. Essentially this is the entire basis for our walkthrus concept – defining the things teachers do. The trick is to identify techniques that have the greatest impact on students’ learning.

foCUS

CPD needs to motivate teachers to sustain a focus on a few areas of practice so that they give themselves a chance to really improve. This means filtering out a lot of the possible things a teacher might do.

HIGH QUAlITy fEEDbACK

Even highly self-evaluative teachers can benefit from feedback but it needs to be trusted to be received.

Teachers absolutely need to be involved in the generation of feedback but expert observers can provide insights.

MEnTAl MoDEl

All along the way, teachers should be formulating and deepening a model for why things work or don’t work with a strong basis in a conceptual model for how learning happens. We don’t do things because we’re told or because we always have – we do them because they secure learning.

Instructional coaching allows a teacher and their coach to get stuck into all five of these areas – identifying what the ‘push beyond’ steps might be, keeping the focus on specific goals, generating high quality feedback in a trusted co-constructed 1 2 // H W R K M AG A Z I N E // N OV E M B E R 2 0 2 1

manner, linking everything to model that gives the decisions a deep rationale rooted in a shared understanding of how learning happens.

The second key text is Paul bambrick-

Santoyo’s work on teacher feedback, as described in his book leverage leadership.

He outlines six key features of effective feedback in a coaching scenario where the coach and teacher meet to exchange ideas and co-plan the next steps. @hwrk_magazine

FEATURE ProvIDE PrECISE PrAISE

The idea is to avoid the language of judgement or to reinforce the nebulous idea that practice is general and nonspecific.

‘The way you engaged Michael, getting him to respond well to your modelling of the writing task, worked well’.

It’s very specific.

ProbE

Probing questions focus a teacher’s attention on the key area of their practice. “How you think Jennifer was doing with those harder problems?” We avoid more open questions ( ‘How do you think the lesson went?’) because that widens out the scope for the evaluation when we’re trying to foster a more focused approach.

IDEnTIfy ProblEM AnD ConCrETE ACTIon STEP

This is the central part of the process. In a directive or consultative style appropriate for the teacher, specific action steps must be identified linked to specific issues. These are the agreed actions that will be followed up on.

PrACTISE

bambrick Santoyo suggests “Great teaching is not learned through discussion. It’s learned by doing… by practicing doing things well. The implication is that, as part of the instructional coaching/ feedback process the coach and teacher explore how the action step should be taken in detail, using modelling and practice activities.

PlAn AHEAD

The action steps need to be recorded for future reference. Did you do the things you said you were going to do?

Ideally the teacher should own their own professional journey and the record of it – but their teacher coach should have access to it for reasons of communication and transparency.

SET TIMElInE

The final step in the feedback discussion is to agree a timescale. by next week? (In some cases). four weeks?

(More likely). Three months? (Too long.) Teachers and their coaches have lots of very light, lean, short interactions rather than a few heavy-duty interactions.

“Instructional coaching is about supporting continual incremental improvement.”

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With these two frameworks in mind, schools then need to plan a process leading them towards implementing a full instructional coaching system over a sensible timeframe. It takes a school

2-3 years to get a good system fully up and running and even then you’ll be tweaking and refining it continually. My five-step plan to establishing a coaching culture is as follows:

DITCH THE JUDGEMEnT CUlTUrE

We need to think in terms of solving a teacher’s challenges – helping them to craft strategies, working alongside them. Accountability driven judgement has to stop before coaching has a chance to take hold.

ESTAblISH A frAMEWorK for TEACHInG AnD lEArnInG

It’s so important for teachers and coaches have a commonly understood reference point that lists and describes the available options when considering actions steps. Jim Knight calls this the ‘playbook’. our Walkthrus books are basically playbooks for coaching – and there are lots of other examples.

DEvEloP ITErATIvE CPD CyClES AnD STrUCTUrES

At first, it can seem like a big change with lots of structural demands and the need for a team of quite skilful coaches.

However, with small steps and a good long-term approach, a great many schools are moving in this direction with great success. There’s something liberating about the whole philosophy around instructional coaching that seems to motivate people whilst simultaneously delivering those incremental changes to teachers’ habits that have an impact on students week in week out.

If you’re interested in finding more about it, grab hold of Jim Knight’s collection of books or take a look at our walkthrus books and materials via www.walkthrus. co.uk or the superb work done by Josh Goodridge and his colleages at https:// powerfulactionsteps.education

It’s important to have strong whole-school and team level CPD processes working where people meet at frequent intervals to plan and discuss common themes – for example around curriculum. Coaching works best within a system where team-level CPD time is highly valued and has a similar iterative feeling, each meeting reflecting on progress since the previous one.

GroW AnD DEvEloP A CoACHInG TEAM

The team of coaches needs to be selected and developed over time. begin with a pioneer team who engage in training around coaching, developing their knowledge and communication skills, before a whole-school rollout is considered. An interim stage is a group coaching structure where several people are coached together. This is more time efficient and can be very productive in generating momentum.

TrAnSfEr oWnErSHIP To TEACHErS

Ultimately, with a good coaching system under way, teachers should be trusted and empowered to drive it. They own the documentation; they make their own record of reflections and action steps and this feeds into their coaching discussions. This is the opposite to when teachers are just on the receiving end of reports and feedback someone else writes.

“the coach can be a sounding board, keeping things on track but essentially putting the teacher firmly in the driving seat.”

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FIVE THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT YOUR CHRONICALLY ILL COLLEAGUES Chronic illness affects so many teachers in ways nobody else would truly understand. Tabitha McIntosh highlights some vital areas we should all be mindful of, when working with colleagues suffering from chronic illnesses.

By Tabitha McIntosh

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Number 1. We don’t necessarily look ill at all See that teacher striding purposefully towards the medical room? The one with the ridiculous boots who’s still laughing at the joke a passing Year 11 just made?

She looks fine, doesn’t she? That’s me last Thursday. And I am not fine at all. I’m Type 1 diabetic and my blood glucose alarm has just gone off. In five minutes I have to teach ‘Romeo and Juliet’ to a rowdy nurture group of 13 year olds, but my blood glucose is 3.1 and dropping rapidly and I have somehow forgotten to pack sugar tablets. You don’t know what that means. Almost no one I have ever worked with or taught will understand what that means. But it’s bad.

Really bad. You’ll have to trust me. Which brings us to:

Number 2. We are worried that you think we’re imposters No one understands a chronic illness better than the person who has it. If your line manager doesn’t take the time to learn about your condition and how it affects you, a chronically ill person is left in a position where they have to explain their physical symptoms over and over again in ways that invade their privacy and violate their dignity. That’s one thing for someone like me whose illness is comparatively stigmafree, but another thing entirely for teachers with a stoma, or Crohn’s Disease or Irritable Bowel syndrome or any other condition that makes emergency toileting a regular feature of work. They should never be put into a situation where they need to explain intimate aspects of their physical health to staff or students. And doing so would violate employment law, because: 1 8 // H W R K M AG A Z I N E // N OV E M B E R 2 0 2 1

Number 3. We’re classed as Number 5. The Covid disabled under the Equality pandemic has left us Act 2010 vulnerable, scared and Not all of us think of ourselves as angry disabled. Some of us reject the label altogether. But the law says we are.

And therefore you are required to make reasonable accommodations for us wherever possible – the kind we routinely make for students but find much harder to make for staff. How do we know you could be doing more to keep us in the classroom? Because:

Number 4. The Covid pandemic showed us that you could have accommodated us all along Schools are inflexible institutions in many ways: there’s no getting around the demands of the timetable, no matter how tired, punch drunk from hypoglycaemia, or brain-fogged you may be feeling. But Covid teaching demonstrated that the accommodations and adaptations that were too difficult to make for us were… not too difficult after all. Because schools made them seamlessly when able bodied people needed them. Parent’s evenings that people like me struggle to manage and recover from? They went virtual instead. Occasionally having to work from home? Isolating teachers across the country streamed into their classes and taught live lessons. After school meetings and briefings? They were broadcast and recorded so everyone could access them when and how they were able to. Which is why the most important thing you should know about your chronically ill colleagues is:

Not all risk is equal. When it comes to Covid, some people in schools are very much more equal than others.

When in-person teaching resumed in Autumn 2020, my school, like so many others, went out of its way to protect me. Black and yellow caution tape was put around my desk to visually mark the two metre line of ‘safety.’ All of my students volunteered to wear masks in lessons, even though the government was advising against it. But as cases mounted across the country, I have never been more acutely aware of my body as a liability and my job as an existential risk. Type 1 diabetics are 3.5 times more likely to die from Covid than our non-diabetic peers, and suffer serious disease complications at much higher rates. Every day felt like Russian Roulette.

And as immunity starts to wane and the booster shot programme grinds slowly into action, that feeling is returning.

We’re scared.

But there’s more than that. We saw people’s relief when the daily death tolls were qualified with a note about the number of victims with ‘underlying conditions.’ That’s me. That’s us. We are the people with underlying conditions.

We are your friends, your colleagues, your partners, the lady in ridiculous boots that you passed while she was striding to the medical room just before Period 5. Our lives matter too. Don’t forget that.

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“NOT ALL TREASURE IS SILVER AND GOLD.” Financial incentives for teachers might not be the panacea they seem. Headteacher Sam Strickland explains why we should be wary of the latest Government plan to recruit teachers in Science, Maths and Computing for challenging schools.

By Sam Strickland

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A

t the Conservative Party Conference held in Manchester during October 2021 the Prime Minister made a commitment pledge.

He offered teachers in the early phase of their careers a salary boost of up to £3000 tax free to teach Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Computing in challenging/ difficult schools. These payments are set to be in place for the first five years of any given teacher’s career, with a view to both recruiting and retaining specialist teachers in schools and areas that need them the most. In total this approach will cost the government £60 million. Political critics of this policy approach argue that this is nothing more than a recycling of a previously similar and failed policy that offered teachers in the same subject areas up to £7500 in bonus payments.

At face value this sounds like a generous commitment pledge. To those outside the profession it will seem like another example of gold plated contracts for teachers who only work 9am to 3pm and receive 13 weeks off a year. However, at face value it is very easy to ignore what is potentially a ‘Fool’s Gold.’ This commitment pledge misses so many of the deeper, systemic and system-wide issues that make working in a challenging/ difficult school all the less inviting. It also makes a number of critical assumptions, which I feel we need to challenge.

Fundamentally, this is why I have cited numerous times that any given Secretary 2 2 // H W R K M AG A Z I N E // N OV E M B E R 2 0 2 1

of State should engage in meaningful dialogue with the profession and with school leaders. As a leader myself I have no desire to see our education system fall apart and I have no desire to offer bogus advice. My MO, like that of so many of my colleagues in this profession, is to do the right thing by our schools and by the children we serve. So there are a number of issues I would like to present, as follows: Firstly, where is the supply chain of teachers specialising in Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Computing? Take Physics, for example, where only one in four of all secondary schools nationally have a Physics specialist. In taking a Physics teacher from one school to position them into another we are in actual fact robbing Peter to pay Paul. I work in Northamptonshire and I can very safely and sadly state that Maths and Computing teachers are like gold dust. There isn’t a huge fishing pool of these people. Of those that are available and willing to move schools there is also a quality issue. Not all Maths and Computing teachers are cut from the same cloth. Some will require far more significant levels of professional development, training and support than others. This presents a huge challenge to schools in an Ofsted category, as they simply do not have the luxury of time to upskill staff.

Then there is the challenge of moving school, namely of establishing yourself in a new school, of learning the new school’s

systems, processes and procedures. Having moved schools many times myself I would argue that it takes a good term to establish yourself in a new setting and a year to actually truly learn the school. Again, schools in a category do not have the luxury of this time.

Secondly, there is a pay issue. I have personally cited multiple times that teacher wages are not high enough. At present the starting salary of a teacher is £25,714, with the average salary £41,900.

The average sounds significant but it takes, on average, 9 years to hit the top end of the pay scale as a UPS3 teacher following four years of degree and teacher training preparation. So, arguably, it takes 13 years to reach this dizzy height.

When you compare this salary to an engineer whose average salary is £48,000, with a senior engineer earning roughly £72,000 and at the highest, a salary in excess of £150,000 then suddenly teaching is on a back foot. Added on top of this is the small matter of an annual bonus that can range from £1,000 to £30,800 per year. The financial remuneration a teacher, especially with a Maths, Physics, Chemistry or Computing background can command, dwarfs into insignificance by comparison. Whilst it is an uncomfortable truth, and those of us in education want to cite that teaching is like a calling, the hard reality is that there is a huge issue at the sourcing level.

In short, just how attractive and lucrative @hwrk_magazine

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is teaching (and believe me it pains me to say this)? Unless something meaningful is done to increase teacher salaries so that they are actually competitive at every level, including at a leadership level, then little will be done to overcome the initial recruitment and later on the retention issue/s that we face. Do we want the best, the brightest and the most able to enter and stay in the profession? If so, well money ultimately talks.

As Alan Hansen once famously stated ‘you can’t win anything with kids.’ Whist I would argue that if you are good enough you are old enough there is an issue here for schools. Critically the £3000 being thrown at teachers to move to challenging schools is during their first five years in the profession. The reality for any school is that you need a blend of experienced and relatively new staff to transform a school that is in trouble. If disproportionately your staffing body is made up of teachers in their first few years of teaching then you have an imbalance and an experience gap.

Equally, it is worth remembering that ECTs have a reduced timetable commitment for two, not one, academic years. This in its own right will present challenges to schools and there will be a need to invest more heavily (understandably and rightly) in the training and development of these early phase teachers. It takes a good three years for a secondary phase teacher to become truly comfortable in their own skin and to iron out the initial professional mistakes that they will inevitably have HWRKMAGAZINE.CO.UK

made in the early phase of their career.

There is also a danger that an imbalanced staffing body will see the over-promotion of colleagues too early on in their career.

Whilst people have succeeded through being promoted early into their time within the profession there are also those that have not. Promoting staff early tends to work successfully where there is the staffing infrastructure in place to allow those early advancers to thrive. Invariably, Maths, Science and Computing teachers are promoted more swiftly than others as a means of retaining them because, guess what, these people work out fairly quickly that they can command a higher salary. This over-promotion can bring with it many unintended consequences for schools, most notably in the form of professionally immature leaders.

Critically, the missing ingredient that appears to be forgotten within this commitment pledge is the need for quality experienced leaders to move to and work in the most challenging of schools in the country. Having worked in and led a challenging school in an Ofsted category I can very safely and confidently state that the challenges are completely different to working in a lovely leafy school (which I have also worked in as a leader).

The reality is a handful of teachers will not change the culture and dynamic of a school. Yes, they will help by reinforcing a staffing body with expertise but ultimately, and contrary to what some argue, school

culture is not amorphous. I find this argument both bizarre and reflective of those holding a very professionally naïve views of school leadership. In schools where leaders know what they want, what they stand for and how a school is to be led, inspired and driven the culture is anything but amorphous. If schools in an Ofsted category are to be transformed then the starting point is to make these schools attractive to leaders who actually know what they are doing and carry the necessary school improvement knowledge, awareness and professional agility to do so.

In some part this comes down to remuneration, especially when the salary of a Headship in a school in less challenging circumstances can often be higher than that offered in a challenging school. There is a degree to which danger money, as crude as that will sound, will therefore be needed to attract key leaders but then we need to go further and deeper than this. These leaders will need time, the suffocating hold of accountability and leagues tables to be taken away and the football management approach to leadership removed. It does not take 18 months to truly change a school. Yes, much can be done in this time and children’s life chances can be greatly improved but to really embed your changes takes longer.

Challenging schools need to be given time to improve and to come a little more away from the spotlight of scrutiny.

Having led a Double RI school (which is N OV E M B E R 2 0 2 1 // H W R K M AG A Z I N E // 2 3

now an Ofsted Good school) there was not a year in my first four years in post where I was not subjected to some form of external scrutiny and accountability, be it Ofsted monitoring visits, DfE on-site reviews (akin to Ofsted inspections), DfE strategic improvement NLE support or Local Authority SIP support (despite being an Academy), plus an expectation that we were engaging in lots of additional external scrutiny to ensure our saw was sharp. This was despite transforming the school at speed and achieving nationally regarded GCSE and A Level outcomes at the last time of asking in the exam hall.

In category 4 schools the scrutiny is even more intense, with a greater emphasis on tick box approaches to improvement.

This becomes wearisome and sadly whilst the tick box seems like it is the right thing to do to improve a school it is often not. For teaching staff they are likely to be subjected to lots of high stake lesson observations which ultimately amount to nothing more than a weighing the pig exercise. I am yet to see any evidence that supports where watching and scrutinising teachers to this level actually benefits teaching, learning and importantly children. It is anything but developmental.

So with this in mind the spotlight of scrutiny needs to firmly shift to one of support. Ofsted needs to consider how it can support, and I genuinely mean support, these schools. Can the timeframes of inspection be pushed back so they are more realistic and allow change not just be initiated, for transformation not just to happen but for proper, deep and sustainable embedded change? Added to this, what can be done to support workload? Teachers in more challenging schools tend, not always, to be led down paths that result in increased workload.

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this is what Ofsted want to see to evidence impact since the last monitoring visit. This becomes a vicious cycle and one that is very hard to break. However, if staff in a challenging school are working twice as hard as the nice school down the road then what is the incentive?

Equally in these more challenging schools behaviour, manners and an adherence to school rules tends to be more of a challenge. These schools need leaders who will prioritise behaviour properly and take a firm, warm and consistent approach to bring about positive change on this front. This then influences the culture, climate and ethos of a school.

Teachers swiftly work out, as do parents and children, which schools have the highest expectations of behaviour and which do not. By that I don’t mean what is written on a piece of paper but what is actually lived and breathed. No school can transform itself until behaviour is right.

You cannot talk curriculum, teaching, pedagogy nor can you recruit teachers until this battle is won.

Staff need support in managing challenging parents as well as pupils.

Sadly challenging schools have their fair share of parents who are educationally disenfranchised. Often the parents who are swift to approach the tabloids at the start of an academic year complaining about a school’s rules are from more challenging schools. More needs to be done to support and protect schools on this front. Parental complaints to Ofsted, which can panic leaders, need to be rationalised a little more. Should complaints about safeguarding be the only ones that are heard and not ones where a school has consistently adhered to its well communicated behaviour policy?

There are also professional limitations to working in more challenging schools.

For example, applying to be an ELE, NLE, Ofsted Inspector, to sit on a Head Teachers Board etc are all precluded because you are not part of a Good/ Outstanding school. Some people do not want these professional doors closing. I can understand why. I also question why a member of staff in a transformative school would be any less qualified than a member of staff in an Outstanding school and therefore unable to access some of the professional avenues I have cited. This is a short sighted approach generated by a system that believes excellence only resides in limited quarters. Then there is the concern of being sacked, which tends to be more of a concern in a challenging school as you have a shorter timeframe in which to turn things around than in a Good school where you have the luxury of time.

Finally, what happens to these shortage subject teachers at the end of their fifth year, when their £3,000 tax free payments come to an end? What happens if they all decide to move on? You almost have to hit the rest button and start again, fishing in a pool that isn’t swimming with an endless supply chain of teachers in these fields.

I appreciate that this article will sound potentially negative. I am hugely proud to have worked in an Ofsted category school and helped to transform it to a Good school, though I didn’t need an inspection to tell me our school was very strong.

Moving schools and picking a school that is right for you is a hugely personal thing and in the process of finding your school it is also possible to make mistakes and get it wrong on the way.

Whilst £3,000 tax free sounds nice, it is worth carefully considering if £250 per month is enough of a pull factor and importantly, whether or not it is the right pull factor for joining a challenging school. @hwrk_magazine

PEDAGOGY 28. Don’t Ditch The Highlighters Highlighters aren’t a silver bullet, but is there a way to use them effectively?

30. EAL Questioning Strategies What should we be doing to support EAL students with questioning in the classroom?

35. The Importance Of Nailing Those Routines

Quick transitions can save you hours over the year. Here’s what to focus on.

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PEDAGOGY DON’T DITCH THE HIGHLIGHTERS! How a low-utility strategy can support a high-utility study strategy

By Kate Jones

Highlighters have long been the go to revision resource and a staple part of a study toolkit for a lot of students. Despite the popularity of highlighter pens; teachers often advise against their use or at least try to warn students how multi-coloured highlighted notes are a poor proxy for learning.

Just because content has been highlighted and underlined, it does not mean the content has been learned.

The purpose of highlighters is to highlight information to be learned. A problem with this (and a significant problem at that) tends to be that students can’t always successfully identify and recognise what information is essential and what isn’t; therefore all notes become brightly coloured and underlined, with the highlighting task itself losing its purpose - when everything is highlighted, nothing is highlighted.

Parents often view highlighted notes as a visible indicator that their child is studying and learning material successfully but highlighted notes can be deceptive.

Highlighting doesn’t always pay off, much to the frustration and confusion of students and their parents.

There are many reasons why students enjoy highlighting and become over reliant on this study strategy. Highlighting can make

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class notes appear bright, colourful and visually very appealing.

Highlighting doesn’t require much mental effort or challenge, it’s easy to do. Highlighted notes don’t tell students what they can and can’t recall, instead it provides a false sense of confidence and the ‘illusion of knowing.’

A classic example is an actor that will use a highlighter to show the lines on a script they must learn. Once their lines have been highlighted this does not mean the actor has automatically learned their lines; it simply shows the actor what lines they need to learn. The actor will need to read their lines and then eventually test themselves until they can recall lines fluently and confidently without the prompt of their script.

The work of John Dunlosky, Professor of Psychology at Kent State University in Ohio, explained how not all study strategies are equal; with research suggesting some are simply more effective than others . Any revision is better than no revision but the amount of time and energy invested into revision should be invested into effective and efficient study strategies. Unfortunately, for fans of the highlighter pen the review carried out by Dunlosky and colleagues showed that this strategy was rated as low utility in terms of its effectiveness.

In contrast to highlighting are effective study strategies, although not always as popular or as widely used, retrieval practice and spaced practice.

Retrieval practice involves the act of recalling information from long term memory; this can and should be carried out in lessons but it is also very straightforward for students to do outside of the classroom independently.

Retrieval practice focuses on how to study whereas spaced practice focuses on when to study. Spaced practice involves exactly that, spacing out study sessions. Study should be carried out little and often over a period of time as opposed to massed or last minute practice known as cramming.

Dunlosky does suggest that students can still use their highlighters but this must not be their sole or main method of study. Firstly, students need to be shown how to use highlighters effectively; how to identify key and relevant information that they need to learn. Secondly, and more importantly, students need to understand that highlighting should only be done at the beginning of the study process.

The secret to successful study is what happens next; how the highlighted information is used to support spaced retrieval practice.

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“Highlighted notes don’t tell students what they can and can’t recall, instead it provides a false sense of confidence and the ‘illusion of knowing.’”

A good idea is to colour code highlighting. Whilst studying history, for example, the following information can be categorised and colour coded using highlighters; • KEY HISTORICAL DATES • KEY EVENTS • KEY INDIVIDUALS • KEY TERMS • CAUSES • EFFECTS Once that information has been highlighted it can be used to

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create flashcards; with a key term on one side and correct definition on the flip side. Another idea would be to create a quiz based on the highlighted content for students to self test at a later date.

Professor Robert Bjork states, ‘Using your memory, shapes your memory. Using your memory, changes your memory’ . Regular retrieval practice can result in students being able to recall content with greater ease and confidence in the future.

Unlike highlighting, retrieval practice will explicitly show students what they can and cannot recall from long term memory. This identifies gaps in knowledge, therefore students know where to focus their next stage of revision.

Highlighters don’t deserve to be ditched but they do need to be understood and used in a way to support effective study strategies, ensuring learners are revisionready and become successful students.

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PEDAGOGY EAL QUESTIONING STRATEGIES One area that EAL learners often find challenging is when asked questions during lessons. The reason for this is that it usually happens too fast. Beth Southern offers some questioning strategies that EAL students find particularly helpful.

By Beth Southern

Working with EAL learners is not about changing everything you do; it’s not about differentiating everything ‘down’. Working with EAL learners is about finding ways to give more time, to provide opportunities to add extra steps into a task and to scaffold those learners to reach their best potential through literacy support.

Research shows that the average question is asked and answered in a classroom within 60 seconds.

When you consider the process that a child learning English goes through to reach their answer – hear the question in English, convert it to their first language, formulate the answer in their first language and then convert back to English – you can see why 60 seconds is nowhere near enough.

more experienced, it is easy to slip into the habit of not using questioning as the effective tool it can be, relying on hands up for answers, focusing on recall only and evaluating answers given.

What about if we switch things up and hand it back over to the students more?

This article is going to look at five questioning ideas that you can try in your classroom, they are not just ‘EAL friendly’, they will also benefit nervous children, children with SEND or literacy needs. The beauty of them is their versatility, their low preparation time and their high engagement rate.

POSE, PAUSE, POUNCE, BOUNCE This questioning strategy has been around for some time now and is accredited to Pam Fearnley and others. The reason this particular technique works with EAL learners is its versatility.

It can be used to assess prior knowledge, to check understand or to consolidate learning. All of these need to happen more regularly for children learning English, as it is easy to wrongly assume EAL learners know little about a topic or for EAL learners to lose understanding part way through a lesson.

So what do teachers need to do to overcome this particular hurdle?

How can we assess children in a way that allows more children chance to answer? We need to start by putting questioning back at the heart of planning – ensuring we know what we are trying to assess and how we are going to do it. As teachers get

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So how does it work?

POSE - The teacher would pose a question to the whole class.

PAUSE - The whole class would pause and think (this is important for EAL learners – build in wait time).

POUNCE - The teacher figuratively ‘pounces’ on a student for a response – the great thing about this is that students all know they could be asked and so are better primed to reply (students need to be trained in these techniques to make them most effective). A tip when you have EAL learners is to not ask them for the first response, they can then listen to earlier responses and confirm their ideas in their head.

Often after receiving a reply from a student we, as teachers, evaluate that reply, add more or disagree and then move on. But not with this technique.

BOUNCE - The teacher will then bounce that child’s response to another child for them to discuss, add more, disagree etc.

If a child feels unable to offer a response then you can let them know you’ll come back to them after they have heard more ideas, to see if they can then add something – this again builds more processing time.

Talk is so important for EAL learners. This strategy reduces teacher talk time and increases student talk time. It also enables learners to see that they don’t always have to answer fully, they can offer part of a response or a simple idea or word and then have it bounced elsewhere, reducing the cognitive load around questioning and reducing potential anxiety.

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Reducing cognitive load is a key part of working with EAL learners, it is why we often provide writing frames, partial responses or additional scaffolding materials because there is less to then be overwhelmed with and they can focus on the parts that matter most.

Comprehension activities can often cause stress for EAL learners as they are faced with what seems like a huge task – read a piece of text and answer 10 questions silently and in writing. A way round this can be to split the activity between 4-5 children, give each student 2-3 questions and then after they have found those answers they talk as a group to ‘teach’ each other the answers for the additional questions. Rather than being faced with a piece of text and 10 questions, it suddenly seems much more manageable with just 2-3 questions followed by discussion with peers to find out the other answers.

Similar to this method is another one that I particularly like for EAL learners - Pose a question for a group to discuss. Listen in and paraphrase back to the class on their behalf. This again reduces the cognitive load by having many brains working on questions rather than one.

It allows EAL learners to listen in, hear good role models of English and add when they can.

As mentioned above, talk is important for EAL learners who use it to help formulate answers in their head, before they begin to write. This method could then be supplemented with a writing frame for them to write the answers that they have discussed.

Add in visual support to assist with abstract concepts and you have fully supported the needs of

the EAL learners to achieve the best they can.

Think-Pair-Share - Most teachers know and use ‘thinkpair-share’, but with EAL learners it is important to ensure that it is being used effectively to help them develop language and understanding. The first part of this technique requires the student to THINK about a question that has been posed, similarly, to the part where we PAUSE in the strategy above, it’s important to ensure that students are actually thinking about the question or using the time to formulate their answers.

I like the idea of getting children to have mini whiteboards and adding something to that during the thinking phase – whether it is just key words, a drawing/ diagram, or a full answer isn’t important. What matters is that they are focused on the question, and you are able to assess without the need to speak. You can see if they have not understood the question or appear to have little comprehension of the topic and you can then intervene during the next stage to ensure they are well-supported.

The second stage is the PAIR stage when they will then compare/combine their answer with a peer – this assists EAL students with getting the correct terminology or language and taking their answer a step further. It also pushes more time in to their answer which is the key for those learning English.

SHARE is the part that allows for crystalising that answer into long term memory, the act of saying it aloud and actually sharing completes the question cycle and gives the EAL learner the best possible chance of remembering the concept.

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PEDAGOGY What you cannot do.

What you can do with help.

What you can do without help.

Question Matrix - A question

matrix is a tool designed with the purpose of introducing us to a hierarchy of questioning, designed similarly to Bloom’s taxonomy or Higher Order Thinking (HOT) questions. As teachers we need to ensure that we are stretching pupils effectively, particularly more advanced bilinguals and we also need to be able to analyse the complexity of the tasks we expect our learners to do. Whilst it is not a bad thing to offer a complex task to an EAL learner, the more complex it is, the more scaffolding is required. So we need to be prepared.

Questioning matrices allow us to offer a variety of questions, moving away from the most common RECALL questions and towards those that require a higher level of thinking, opinion or free choice. Building the confidence of EAL learners is the key and we can do this by ensuring we offer them a range of questions that develop their confidence. Constantly asking questions that are too easy can leave them disengaged and switched off, similarly asking questions that require high levels of comprehension and understanding can leave them feeling inadequate and lacking in confidence. As Vygotsky talked about the Zone of Proximal Development for general learning, it applies directly to questioning techniques also. We need to ensure that we pose the right level of question with the right amount of support to put our students in the best position to make progress. The support can come in a range of ways from peer support, additional thinking time, talking before writing or group work.

The diagram below demonstrates how questions increase in difficulty and how we need to try and build up to those that require high order thinking skills and comprehension. The key in all of this is planning – we need to ensure that we include questioning within our lesson plan so that it becomes a fundamental part of the lesson rather than a quick show of hands.

If you aim to put questioning back at the heart of your lesson, it forces you to consider the strategy you might adopt and why. It also helps you analyse the complexity of the task at hand and whether you need to provide additional scaffolding steps. Regular use of a range of techniques will allow learners to gain confidence with them and understand that it is a normal part of the lesson, it will also enable you to know which work best for different outcomes.

Ultimately it is not the number of questions that you ask but the techniques that you implement and your reasons for choosing them. It’s your willingness as a teacher to broaden your questioning horizons and better understand the complexity of whatever task you have set, that will get the best results.

“When you consider the process that a child learning English goes through to reach their answer – hear the question in English, convert it to their first language, formulate the answer in their first language and then convert back to English – you can see why 60 seconds is nowhere near enough.”

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PEDAGOGY

in association with

THE IMPORTANCE OF NAILING THOSE ROUTINES Schools are complex environments, where transitions from one activity to another can be chaotic if not managed carefully. Shannen Doherty explains the importance of having clear and consistent routines for these transition points, to make the most of the time available with your students.

By Shannen Doherty

Not too long ago, someone tweeted that the difference between primary and secondary is that we can’t get through a five-hour day on systems and routines because relationships are everything in primary education. This just isn’t the case! The two ideas go hand in hand: they’re not mutually exclusive. You cannot have routines without relationships, and I’d argue you struggle to develop good relationships with all pupils in a classroom without systems, routines, and structure.

Teachers and students thrive together when there is structure and routines are in place. We don’t like the unknown. We must create a safe space for our pupils.

Routines are a huge part of this!

So many children don’t have routines or rules at home; they crave this at school. Of course, some pupils will test this and push the boundaries but that is exactly why it’s important to have those boundaries firmly in place.

important?’ with the question ‘What do you think the aim of education is?’ Ultimately, if we don’t nail behaviour then less learning will happen. It’s that simple. If the culture and behaviour isn’t good enough then the environment isn’t right for every child to learn.

Nailing behaviour means teaching behaviour. How often have you heard someone in school say, ‘You need to behave!’? But do the children know what that means? Do they have the same

expectations at home? Did their teacher last year have the same expectations? Has anyone ever bothered to explain and model what good behaviour is and why it’s important? We need to teach behaviour. We need to model it. We need to practise it.

I’m writing this when we’re half a term into the academic year. If you didn’t take the time to teach behaviour and create routines, then it is not too late! It takes time and energy and it’ll be draining but it’s worth the work.

In Running the Room (2020), Tom Bennett says we can answer the question ‘Why is behaviour so

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PEDAGOGY In education, every moment is precious. This is even more true after our students missed months of education during two periods of lockdown. We can’t waste time with loose transitions and a lack of routines. Think of recurring events in your class such as handing out books, lining up for assembly or coming into school each morning. Iron out the kinks in these times by setting routines.

Doug Lemov has said that routines and strong procedures are perhaps the single most powerful way to bring efficiency, focus and rigour to a classroom. How much time is wasted with woolly transitions?

If I think back to my NQT self, I know we spent far too much time on the ‘in between’ moments.

That time could have been spent on learning or getting to know my class better!

So now I have set routines for how I want things done. Sometimes these change from class to class, for example when I had a class of 17 Year 2 children last year! However, generally the premise is the same.

When the children come into school each day, their journey to their table is mapped out.

They know exactly where they’re expected to go, where to put their water bottle, which way to walk around to put their packed lunch on the trolley (there’s not much space so a one-way system around the edge of the classroom works wonders here!) and then to go straight to their chair. Their early work is on the board. They know to start this and set the tone for the room for other children arriving later.

“The minutes we spend each day on recurring events or tasks add up to hours and hours over the course of the year.” anyone else. This one took a lot of practising but now it’s smooth and easy! It means we don’t have to stop five whole minutes before the assembly starts. There’s no more faffing about.

To hand out the books, I have three rows so those books are always put away in three piles. I put the three piles at the end of each row and they pass them down quickly and quietly… but not so fast and frantic that they make a load of noise!

These simple routines mean that I’m not spending minutes and minutes each day giving instructions or organising them into order. They already know what the expectation is and because we practised it again and again… and again we aren’t wasting time. The minutes we spend each day on recurring events or tasks add up to hours and hours over the course of the year. What a waste of precious time.

Going back to the tweet that inspired this piece, we need routines and rules to get us

through a five-hour teaching day with the same children. That’s what gets us through. Routines need not be seen as a secondary thing. I can’t imagine teaching full time without routines and systems in place.

How on earth do I get through the day without these quick and easy practices? Creating habits for our children is so important to enable them to focus on the learning.

We have a duty to create a safe place that the children can trust in. Routines, clear expectations and consequences are all part of this. We cannot expect our students to flourish and learn in an environment where they don’t know what’s expected.

So if you think your class would benefit from more routine and structure, consider the points in the day that are repetitive. What do you do each lesson or each day that could be formalised? What signal can you give to begin the routine?

How can you save yourself from repeating the same instructions every single day? Get planning those routines and then get your class practising them!

When it’s time to line up for assembly, each row goes one at a time from the back to the front.

They follow their row leader and don’t jump ahead. They walk a specific route to the line so that they don’t have to squeeze past

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EXPAND YOUR MIND ONE SUBJECT AT A TIME

40. Shakespeare For All Laying the groundwork for all students to succeed in their study of Shakespeare’s works

44. Let’s Tork Abawt Spelling

Why spelling in English is so complex

48. How I Would Teach… Iterative Design

Tips on how to teach the process of iterative design, with limited curriculum time

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CURRICULUM

ShakeSpeare For all Teaching Shakespeare can be a very challenging task and even more so with particular students who struggle with the language and the context of his works. Here, Zoe Enser offers her tips on how to make lessons on Shakespeare accessible for all students.

By Zoe Enser

Tackling something as challenging as Shakespeare can be a daunting prospect. The alien language, the unfamiliar context, and the sometimes-complex narratives, with subplots and a constantly changing variety of bit players littering the stage, even the most proficient reading can find the prospect of exploring this overwhelming. If you are a student with an SEN, or have literacy needs or English is a second language, this can feel even more confusing, and the temptation to avoid this challenge is understandable. However, I am a great believer that Shakespeare’s plays have enough inherent value to mean they should be available to all, especially if we want to then discuss what it is which does, or does not, make his plays important to us.

Here are some ways that I teach Shakespeare in a way which means all students, regardless of any additional needs they have, can gain from the study of his plays: 1) First, I begin by ensuring I have a good understanding of what the specific need is or what barriers Shakespeare may present to particular students. This is not much different to how I would approach any class, as the more I know their starting points

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or different requirements the better I can ensure learning can take place.

In many ways studying his work can be a great leveller though. Regardless of starting points, all may well find exploring his work a challenge and will be encountering something brand new, even if they have studied some of his plays before. All will experience something which they find difficult and will need to scratch their head over and just because some may find aspects of reading trickier than their peers, this doesn’t mean they won’t be able to examine plot, theme, character, and language in his work.

The starting points of the students doesn’t just mean knowing reading ages and fluency, although that can be useful, but it means exploring what they may already know, what they may have already experienced, and what misconceptions they may have picked up on their journey to my classroom. Films like Bill or programmes like Upstart Crow are excellent entertainment, and in both cases the writers have done very interesting things with their knowledge of Shakespeare’s history and writing, but they can very easily have taken students off into a range of potentially problematic directions. So, whilst I access where students are through questioning and

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English

discussion, I also take time to address these initial misconceptions, focusing my attention on those who may struggle even more if they struggle to move away from that initial thinking.

2) The next part of the process is to think carefully about the steps and stages we need to go through, often beginning with exploring and embedding knowledge of the plot and character. I identify where the hinge points may be, those moments in the plot where if they don’t understand what has happened, the meaning may become tangled. For some EAL or SEN students these misunderstandings can come thick and fast if we were to dive straight into a performance or reading, so I will offer short summaries either at the start of the sequence of learning or after watching or reading a scene to support all. I also plan carefully how the plot will unfold for them, so I can ensure they are not overwhelmed by too much information at once.

“All will experience something which they find difficult and will need to scratch their head over and just because some may find aspects of reading trickier than their peers, this doesn’t mean they won’t be able to examine plot, theme, character, and language in his work.”

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CURRICULUM

Knowing where these points of misunderstanding may arise before I begin to teach also allows me to pre-teach, preparing the ground of what is to follow. For example, by paying close attention to the Prologue of Romeo and Juliet or making use of a modern retelling of the story, students can hit the ground running when they encounter the full text. I used the Frankenstein play script by Phillip Pullman for this with real success for some SEN students, who read the play as part of their supported tutor reading, before arriving at the English lesson. Making use of graphic novel versions of the plays and short animations can also be a useful gateway into the greater complexity to come.

Pre-teaching vocabulary can also be another useful way to support students once they arrive to the text as a whole. Simple translations of things like the ‘thee’ and ‘thou’, an area that a range of students often struggle with, or key vocabulary which allows them to explore a text in more depth, such as villain, or hierarchy, can again mean they are able to approach the lesson with more confidence.

3) As I have considered the steps and stages through the plot and character, it gives me the perfect opportunity to check that all students are really accessing the learning. Low-stakes quizzes on mini-whiteboards help me to see what everyone has understood and what is being retained. If there are key points missed, I can either reteach then and there, or make a note to revisit this later.

Reteaching and revisiting could be with the whole class, a small group or an individual. But by checking understanding regularly it means that I can see exactly where students are and whether I need to guide them back on track.

4) Performance is obviously an important element of Shakespeare’s work, although these plays were not just written for performance.

Allowing students to see a good quality performance though, scaffolded by pre-teaching and summary as suggested above, will help them to interact with the text as an audience. A good production will also model the reading of complex lines and support students to hear the links between the individual words and overall meaning conveyed in the action.

Giving students the opportunity to explore the text as performance themselves can also be a good way to ensure they have a greater understanding of the plot, themes, and character. This doesn’t necessarily mean them performing whole scenes, but focusing instead on key phrases or moments.

A ‘yes/ no’ argument between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as she tries to convince him to kill the king, can be just as interesting as students performing the whole of that dialogue, as they consider what she does with each line: what might the tone be when she says, ‘had I so sworn’? Which way would she face? Where would she stand in relation to him? Does this change when she delivers the next part of her speech?

Line by line and moment by moment performance, including using tableaux and collaborative storytelling, can really bring a text alive for some students.

5) To create links between what we are discussing about the play and the performance, I use visual, images taken from the performance I selected, to allow students to associate particular characters, with key moments

“A good production will also model the reading of complex lines and support students to hear the links between the individual words and overall meaning conveyed in the action.”

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English

and the different themes or ideas.

Romeo and Juliet for example is a play where students can sometimes get confused as to who belongs with each family, and how they relate, and a visual family tree, which we then discuss, helps to ensure that as they follow the action as it unfolds. Using these images later to reinforce who is speaking can also provide a scaffold to understanding and linking images to lines, themes or characters can also ensure that there is greater access for all.

6) Once we are at the stage of writing about the plays, not something that should be rushed, I model, model and model some more. This means whether we are writing our own summaries or adding details to those we had at the start, or writing in a more analytical way, I will show students how they can do this, taking them through step-bystep. Coupling this with sentence stems, which can gradually become embedded as part of their own oral and written toolbox, means they will be able to write with greater confidence and fluency about these complex ideas and texts. Breaking this down

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into its component parts is really important and allows a close focus on crafting their work from the first sentence to writing a full essay.

Ultimately, however we may feel about Shakespeare and his influence ourselves, we cannot argue his work hasn’t managed to work its way into our psyches over the centuries. If we want students to be able to engage with the debates that surround this, examining where his ideas, stories and language transcends the boundaries of their English lessons, and be successful in their exams too, we need to consider how we can ensure that as many barriers to engaging with his work as possible are removed.

It’s then up to the students to decide whether it will be ‘once more into the breach’ when they meet with his work again or whether it’s ‘for ever, and for ever, farewell’ to the Bard, confined to the dim and distant memories of their English classrooms.

But if we don’t support them to understand what his work could offer, that will never be a choice they are in a position to make.

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Let’s tork abawt speLLing The English language contains so many sounds and spellings that seem, at least on the surface, to make little sense. In this piece, Neil Almond explores the reasons for this complexity and how we might understand it better.

By Neil Almond

The reason English is such a hard language to read and spell is because it has a deep orthography or complex code. Orthography refers simply to the spelling system. In English there are multiple ways to spell the 44 sounds of the English system - around 176 common spellings to be precise1. In very simple terms, this is why spelling in English is so difficult.

Contrast this with a language with a shallow orthography, or simple code, such as Finnish, where each sound in the language is only spelled by one symbol. This makes learning to decode and spell words in Finnish far simpler. The reasons for the complexity in English code is a complex journey that I will attempt to distill.

In 1786, the Anglo-Welshman Sir William Jones, working as a

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British judge in India, wrote a sentence that appears in many textbooks on the subject of historic linguistics. A talented linguist, he was tasked with the regulation of English merchants in India along with the existing rights of the local population that followed ancient rules and laws based on Hindu laws. These laws were written in Sanskrit, a language that no other British judge could read. Over time, Jones poured over Sanskrit texts and was soon able to speak the language. It was while studying this, that he came to a conclusion which he presented in his third annual discourse to the Asiatic Society of Bengal.

“The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure: more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either; yet bearing to both of

them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.”2 Three languages: Latin, Greek and Sanskrit, separated by time and space but all having a common source language, echos similarities to Darwin’s theory of Evolution.

Only, we are not talking about the ancestry of biological life-form but a socially constructed invention.

It was this understanding of the nature of language, that languages have evolved from a common ancestor that linguists were able to trace Latin, Greek and Sanskrit back to that ancestor - ProtoIndo European (PIE). Over time, linguists were able to add other languages which had their ancestry in PIE.

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Literacy

indo european tree As can be seen in the IndoEuropean-Tree, English is not a direct descendant of PIE. (Some words can be traced back to PIE. For example ‘father’ comes from a word that would have sounded like <p>, <ah>, <t> <er>3 .)

However, its roots lie in ProtoGermanic, a direct descendant of PIE, that was spoken some 6,000 years ago.

The Germanic influence arrived in the early 5th century with the departure of the Romans from Britain and the arrival of three Germanic tribes: the Angles, Jutes and Saxons. These tribes would have brought their West-Germanic

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language with them when they eventually settled on these isles.

This would be known as OldEnglish.

It is worth pointing out here that, despite this being the main root of the English language, if we were able to travel through time to 500CE, we could not converse easily with an AngloSaxon. Indeed, both our languages would sound completely foreign to each other. That is because after approximately one-thousand years, a language evolves to such an extent that it would become difficult for each party either side of that millennium to converse with each other (unless specialist study was undertaken).

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793CE marked the first planned invasion of the Vikings to Britain and with their eventual settlement here, they brought along their Norse language from Scandinavia, whose ancestry can be found in North Germanic languages.

The mixture of language, culture and trade (another way that new vocabulary would have come into use) of the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings in Britain continued for just under 300 years, becoming rooted in daily life due to the increasing literacy of the elite of society. But another invasion of Britain was soon to add another layer of complexity to the mix.

On 28 September 1066, William, Duke of Normandy, landed in Pevensey with an army and on October 14 this army defeated King Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings. The successful invasion and eventual settlement brought with it the language of old-French, which has its root in Latin, due to Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul (modern-day France) a millennia before.

This Latin would also have brought with it elements of Ancient Greek, due to the Roman occupation of Greece. This is where we get the spelling <ph> to represent the sound /f/. French continued to be the language of the elite and of the courts but it failed to become the dominant language of the peasant class with Old-English continuing to be used.

From then on, the versions of English and French that were spoken at the time battled for dominance and it wasn’t until mid 15th century, for various political reasons between the nobility of France and England, that English emerged as the dominant language.

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However, it was not just through invasion and settlement that the English language evolved.

Cultural shifts in religion also impacted the language that was spoken. Latin was the language of the Catholic Church which has been the dominant religion of the Britain for the best part of twothousand years. From Emperor Constantine through to Alfred the Great, William the Conquerer and beyond, Latin would have been spoken by some in Britain for approximately 1500 years.

It is worth noting that words which contain Latin roots are more often than not still Latin and not English.

For example, struct is the Latin root of construction and the root has no meaning in English. This is useful to know as the Latin layer of the English code can be treated differently the English layer, when it comes to spelling.

The above represents a very brief and simplistic version of how English spelling system came to be so complex. It is a cocktail of other languages that through time have mixed together thorough political, cultural and social causes to produce what we have right now.

It would however, be remiss of me to not briefly mention the attempt to standardise the spelling of words by Samuel Johnson in 1755, after this great cocktail had been produced. However, there in lies part of the issue. Johnson attempted to standardise the spelling of words and not the sounds that make up those words.

Had Johnson standardised the spelling at the phonemic (sound) level, then it is possible that the spelling <ee> could have just stood for the sound /ee/ as in ‘see’.

The failure to do this is yet another reason why the English code continues to be so complex.

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SPeLLiNG

1 McGuinness, D., 2006. Early reading instruction: What science really tells us about how to teach reading. MIT Press.

2 Anthony, D. 2010. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

3 For an in-depth look at the history of the word ‘father’ and to trace it back through various languages, I highly recommend the History of English Podcast with Kevin Stroud.

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CURRICULUM

HOW I WOULD TEACH THE ITERATIVE DESIGN PROCESS Here, Aidan Severs explains his teaching methods and thought processes as he teaches students the topic of Iterative Design in Technology.

By Aidan Severs

The National Curriculum says ‘Through a variety of creative and practical activities, pupils should be taught the knowledge, understanding and skills needed to engage in an iterative process of designing and making.’

“...we don’t have to complete the whole process every time we teach a DT unit. We can introduce new aspects of the design process over time, gradually building children’s repertoire of design skills.”

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DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY

What is the iterative design process?

‘Iteration’ means the repetition of a process and ‘iterative’ means involving iteration. The iterative design process refers to a sequence of actions that are repeated in the course of designing something.

At my school I have broken the iterative design process down into the following process, with the end part becoming cyclical:

Each of the elements of the process can be explained simply: Fact-Finding Phase

Design Phase

Iterative Phase

Problem

Identify a problem that needs to be solved and who the problem affects

Needs

Gather information about needs, wants and values from those who the problem affects

Investigate

Investigate existing products and analyse them

Criteria

Set design criteria based on the above

Design

Design product, communicating ideas in a range of ways;

Plan

Plans how to make the product, including materials needed and steps to take during making

Model

Make prototype of the product; create a first iteration/draft

Test

Plan (before making) and carry out suitable tests for the product, referring to the design criteria

Analyse

Evaluate and receive critique, referring to the design criteria, and against the following:

This part of the process should be cyclical until analysis shows the product meets the design criteria

• Is it fit for purpose?

• Is it innovative?

• Is it functional?

• Is it appealing?

• Does it meet the needs of a group/individual?

Refine

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Make changes to the product, making the next iteration/draft of the design

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Is it that simple?

No. As we all know, the primary timetable is a squeeze and Design Technology is often one of the subjects that gets squeezed into one of days or weeks if the children are lucky. Additionally, it is a subject that many teachers feel less confident in planning and teaching. Looking at the above process can feel pretty daunting, especially if you know you’ve only got 1 hour per week in a couple of half terms to actually do it. Can teachers and children really be expected to complete that whole process in every unit of DT work?

A process over time The answer to the above question is that we don’t have to complete the whole process every time we teach a DT unit. We can introduce new aspects of the design process over time, gradually building children’s repertoire of design skills.

For example, younger children might not identify a problem. Instead, teacher may present them with a problem that the children can solve in their own designs. Or, teachers may provide some simple analysis of a variety of existing products, making explicit strengths and weaknesses so that children can begin to plan their own product with those pros and cons in mind.

The key to working towards having children complete the whole design process (perhaps in upper key stage 2) is for teachers to fill in the gaps, providing children with resources and input that allow them to focus only on particular parts of the sequence.

Which parts when?

Being deliberate and mapping out when children will first encounter the various aspects of the iterative design process will ensure that there is consistency and progression across the DT curriculum.

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DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY

For example, at my school, children in the Early Years work within just three of the areas: Problem, Design and Model. In Nursery, whilst making things, children will use simple language and vocabulary to talk about what they want to do and what they have done. They will continue to do this in Reception, with a focus on creating with increasing purpose whilst talking about what they are doing.

In Reception, teachers will guide children’s analysis of their own modelling, leading them to complete a ‘2 stars and a wish’ evaluation of what they have made. In Year 1 this will continue with children talking about the

choices they have made and how they have edited their ways of working.

Then in Year 1, whilst still working on the above, children will begin to explore the Test and Refine phases of the process by making decisions, changing and adapting their methods whilst making things.

During this time, teachers will provide the necessary information to cover the other parts of the design process, for example by telling the children what a user might need and showing them other similar products that already exist (this could even be a teachermade model). At this young age,

children probably won’t even be making something for a user other than themselves, and their making processes might involve construction toys and junk modelling. Where this is the case it may not even be necessary for teachers to fill in the gaps of the design process.

Further up the school, children could get to the point where, at an age-appropriate level, they are completing most of the iterative design process, but aren’t necessarily always learning new parts, instead revisiting ways of working from previous year groups.

For example, Year 3 could work on the following: Fact-Finding Phase

Problem

Uses simple language and vocabulary to talk about what they want to do (introduced in nursery)

Needs

Considers the purpose and appeal to the user when designing (introduced in Year 2)

Investigate Criteria Design Phase

Design

Generates, develops, models and communicates their ideas through discussion, annotated sketches and prototypes (new to Year 3) Creates drawings which identify all necessary dimensions and works from these drawings (new to Year 3)

Iterative Phase Plan

Develops written step by step plans (new to Year 3)

Model

Whilst making, children can decide, change and adapt methods used to be successful (introduced in Year 1)

Test

Whilst making, children can decide, change and adapt methods used to be successful (introduced in Year 1)

Analyse

Evaluate their ideas and products against design criteria and creates another draft/iteration (new to Year 3)

Refine

Evaluate their ideas and products against design criteria and creates another draft/iteration (new to Year 3)

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CURRICULUM

In this way, as can be seen in the table, DT projects in Year 3 will involve some new skills learning in the Design, Analyse and Refine phases whereas children will simply be revisiting and practising other parts of the process and having teacher-provided resources in lieu of yet other parts of the process (Investigate and Criteria in this instance).

In doing this, the time allotted to the teaching of DT can be more focused and deliberate and the iterative design process can be taught over time so that

by Year 6 children are following the whole process and are beginning to complete some parts of it with a degree of independence. In reducing the amount of new content that is taught regarding the design process, there will still be ample time to teach the more

specific skills, for example how to cut wood at an angle, how to join two pieces of fabric or how to make a bread dough.

Whose responsibility is this?

As what I have outlined is a whole school approach, it is clear that the responsibility to be strategic about the teaching of the iterative design process over time lies with whoever is in charge of leading Design Technology.

However, there are implications for teachers working in schools where no such whole-school strategy exists.

For example, if you teach three DT units during a year, you could look

at splitting up the phases of the process over those three units. If you work closely with the other year group(s) in your phase then perhaps you can coordinate the coverage between you.

Even if you don’t have the opportunity as a teacher to do this, it is still important to remember that you don’t have to burden yourself and the children with completion of the whole iterative design process in one DT project.

Break it down, decide which parts of it are relevant, necessary and appropriate – use some assessment information here if you have it or can get it – and deliver a unit that allows children to experience at least part of the iterative design process.

“...the time allotted to the teaching of DT can be more focused and deliberate and the iterative design process can be taught over time so that by Year 6 children are following the whole process”

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56. Spotting ADHD In Girls: The Hidden SEND

Spotting and supporting students who present with the symptoms of ADHD

60. Teaching In The Middle

What can we learn from middle schools?

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EXPERIENCE

SPOTTING ADHD IN GIRLS: THE HIDDEN SEND… This year I was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 39. So how did I get to this age, without a diagnosis, since my specialist described me as being a “A Classic Case“?

By Caroline Keep

For many, the idea of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is summed up by the myth of hyperactive young boys, something I’m familiar with as a teacher… so how could I have possibly missed this in myself given all those CPD training sessions too? On top of that, I have worked with some wonderful SENCOs over the years and nobody mentioned it – perhaps they were just being ‘polite’. Apparently not! Having spoken to several of them after my diagnosis they said, ‘Well, we assumed you knew…’ I did not.

Neither did my parents, they assumed I was just ‘quirky’.

Now you would think my doctors may have spotted something during those endless sessions for depression in my youth. But again, no. My husband suspected I was ‘different’, but that’s just how he saw me…’different’ and it never dawned on him that all those hours of intense hyperfocus was anything other than a desire to succeed.

So, what happened? I fell between the cracks and it turns out that these cracks are well documented. We fail young women and girls all the time because of the male-centric ADHD stereotypes with which most of us are familiar i.e. boys bouncing of the walls, which itself is a terrible oversimplification of ADHD. The

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myths surrounding it has moreover allowed me to go through most of my adult life confused.

So, here are a few tips on how to spot ADHD in women and girls in an attempt to dispel the myth that it is all about hyperactivity.

It isn’t a real thing.

Let’s get this out the way. It is estimated that 1.5 million adults have the condition, but only 120,000 of these have been diagnosed. It is affecting as many as 5.3% of all children. So, if you have a class of 30, it is likely that at least one of them has ADHD. It is a neurological condition which, as shown by a study in 2017 in The Lancet, has profound effects on the brain. Yes, those of us with ADHD are wired differently – we’re not less as a result, just different!

You can’t possibly ‘have it’ – you’re too bright.

We do well at school, are quiet and study hard. We can’t possibly have ADHD, right? Wrong. I, for example, was top of my class and a “first-rate student”. ADHD in girls can be a hidden disorder, with many having

the inattentive presentation. The quiet girl (or boy, yes boys can have this too…) seems lost and cannot seem to pay attention. These pupils are often described by teachers as bright young people, who cannot seem to “get it together”.

But you’re not ‘bouncing off the walls’…

Correct. Most girls don’t – you’re more likely to see that in boys. When you do see hyperactivity in girls, it often manifests as ‘chattiness’ rather than physical disruption, and we don’t see that in the same light as hyperactivity in boys — it’s more of an internal mental restlessness rather than an external physical one. Our minds can be racing even though our bodies may be quite still and so therefore, we miss your conversation, struggle with too many instructions, or just ‘lose time’.

“When you do see hyperactivity i often manifests as ‘chattiness’ ra physical disruption, and we don’ in the same light as hyperactivity

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in girls, it ather than ’t see that y in boys”

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EXPERIENCE It’s just teenage hormones or anxiety…

Going down this route can lead to years of misdiagnosis. Girls and women with ADHD can have difficulties regulating their emotions, a hard time socially and low selfesteem, after years of being told “try harder”, but this pressure to fit in comes at a cost. Girls can be more socially capable, as they often mirror, copy or imitate the skills of peers, thus making them harder to spot, but meltdown and exhaustion can quickly follow. Moreover, undiagnosed ADHD can cause anxiety, depression, conduct disorder, substance abuse, and sleep problems. So, check with your SENCO before chalking it up to “Teenagers”.

But they’re fine in my class…

What we’re missing here is the emphasis on my class. In other words, in classes that give us that wonderful dopamine hit (that means we’re interested) we can be fine, whilst in other settings… not so much. That my friends, is the result of something called hyperfocus. It’s our superpower! Hyperfocus is the ability to zero intensely on an exciting project or activity for hours at a time. I personally love it. Unfortunately, most of us with ADHD struggle to direct this… and often forget to eat during such periods as well.

People with ADHD have low levels of dopamine in the brain’s frontal lobes and this makes it harder for us to change tasks, especially when enjoying the current task more than a suggested new one. Hyperfocus is our way of References:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-44956540 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS22150366(17)30049-4/fulltext https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorderadhd/symptoms/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/ PMC6745333/#:~:text=It%20is%20estimated%20that%20 around,issues%20with%20such%20studies%20and

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boosting our dopamine levels from the enjoyment we get from something that really interests us. So, I might do brilliantly in for example, English Literature when reading Frankenstein, but fail completely in History if it’s not a topic I like. I can’t pick and choose.

It’s not that I don’t have attention, I just can’t regulate where that attention goes.

It comes with friends…

When I was diagnosed, the shock came not from the ADHD being confirmed. After a while of researching for teaching my pupils, I had long suspected I was different. But the results from my autism diagnosis. I could not be dyslexic, have ADHD and have autism? Well, actually, yes.

Studies have shown 60%–100% of children with ADHD also exhibit one or more comorbid disorders. Estimates of up to 30 per cent of those diagnosed with dyslexia also have ADHD and up to 42% with ADS. So, being told I was highly likely to be autistic too means I am now undergoing the whole process of getting diagnosed again, just this time for ASD. This happens quite commonly apparently.

the entire spectrum of symptoms and challenges we face https://www. additudemag.com/. Both have been a godsend, so hopefully you will have a look at them.

Getting yourself checked out…

What happens when you DO have a look at the resources above and think… “That sounds like me”?

Well… please speak to your GP and take the short diagnostic criteria test for ADHD. Life is much easier with a confirmed diagnosis if you have ADHD. You may not. But if you do, don’t be frightened of telling your school. Mine was very supportive, and we need more teachers and role models for our young people. The phrase “I have ADHD too” has never been more powerful.

Last, but absolutely not least… ADHD role models

Supporting ADHD pupils

Pupils and teachers with ADHD can often feel that ‘the world out there is not like me’ and so struggle to relate to traditional role models. Thankfully, there are a lot of neurodiverse people out there, some of whom have publicly spoken about their experiences, from Simone Biles, Dave Grohl to Sir Richard Branson.

Suppose you’re trying to help a student with ADHD. There are many brilliant resources to help, including some fantastic resources from the wonderful ADHD Foundation https:// adhdfoundation.org.uk/, which we all should be reading and was incredibly helpful in my diagnosis. The attitude magazine is brilliant in understanding

You see, although we tend often to focus on the difficulties of ADHD, there can be a real positives too and Forbes described ADHD as the entrepreneurs’ superpower. ADHDers (as they’re sometimes known) see the world and its potential entirely differently to neurotypical people and this can lead to unique perspectives.

https://dyslexiaida.org/attention-deficithyperactivity-disorder-adhdand-dyslexia/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/dalearcher/2014/05/14/adhd-theentrepreneurs-superpower/?sh=6f7da8f259e9

https://www.adhdfoundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/ Teaching-and-Managing-Students_FINAL.pdf

https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/leonardo-da-vinci-adhd-scli-intl/ index.html

https://adhdfoundation.org.uk/

https://www.ted.com/talks/temple_grandin_the_world_needs_all_kinds_ of_minds/transcript?language=en

https://www.additudemag.com/ https://www.additudemag.com/simone-biles-adhd-olympicgymnast-publicly-addresses-condition/

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It’s been suggested for example that Albert Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci both had classic ADHD, although we’ll never know for sure…

As the world-leading animal behaviourist and autistic Temple Grandin says, “The world needs all kinds of minds”.

As tricky as it is negotiating through a neurotypical world, I wouldn’t trade my neurodivergent brain. I experience and see the world differently from my neurotypical counterparts, and for me, whilst this has sometimes meant hardship, it has, with support also brought success.

I wouldn’t trade my ADHD for anything.

“Hyperfocus is the ability to zero intensely on an exciting project or activity for hours at a time. I personally love it. Unfortunately, most of us with ADHD struggle to direct this”

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EXPERIENCE

VIEW FROM THE MIDDLE The three-tier school system is often overlooked by policy-makers and poorly understood by those who haven’t worked in them.

Nick Wood explains what can be learnt from the way middle schools operate.

By Nick Wood

School-based education discourse often leads to observation of the differences between primary and secondary schooling. Policy-making across the school sector inevitably ends up favouring one or the other, as the reason for the policy is often to address an issue more prominent in that particular part of the sector.

As a minority part of the school sector, middle schools are frequently overlooked: in general discourse; in the design of data-gathering activities which are supposed to shed light on macro problems; in policy-making; and in what they might offer in terms of a perspective on what constitutes good practice in schools, and also what doesn’t.

There are now just over 100 middle schools in England, the majority of which have academised. The current number is relatively stable. The minority status of middle schools is the result of a process started in the 1980s to rationalise the education system to a consistent primary / secondary model. One might presume this is because middle schools are less effective, however there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Most of these schools are part of a three-tier local system, with pupils moving from first school to middle school at the start of Year 5, and from middle school to upper / high

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school at the start of Year 9. It’s a model that doesn’t sit neatly with our accountability system. But it wasn’t supposed to. It was designed with child development in mind.

A common argument against the three-tier system is the effect often referred to as “transition dip”. Moving schools puts cognitive load under pressure as in the first half-term of a new setting, pupils’ attention to subject learning is hampered by the individual need to learn the geography, social mores and routines of the new setting: something we all do in a new environment to meet the needs of personal safety and security. This leads to an apparent dip in academic performance in the early part of the child’s career in a new school. Surely a system with two transitions leads to more dips in performance, which is to the detriment of pupil outcomes?

Yet there is evidence to suggest this is not true. My hypothesis is that pupils, having experienced one successful transfer, build a resilience to moving environments.

The second transfer gives feedback that moving institutions is not a barrier to be feared, and this is supported by social proof of one’s peers. Resilience to change is one of the outcomes of education that most people would agree is a good thing; yet is not measured or valued by our accountability system.

Imagine the difference at a personal level – a child moving from a typical one or two form entry primary of between 200 and 300 children to a large secondary of 1500 children has to deal with this change at the same time as most are dealing with all the anxiety and cognitive change that puberty can throw at them. The same child in a three-tier system moved schools to a 400 – 600 environment before this started, has had more specialist teaching and access to specialist learning environments across the curriculum from an earlier age, has been given the responsibility of organising themselves to go from room to room in this smaller, more nurturing environment, with staff that can specialise in the needs of children of this age both emotionally and academically.

“It’s a model that doesn’t sit neatly with our accountability system. But it wasn’t supposed to. It was designed with child development in mind.”

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EXPERIENCE This second child is supported to develop in this environment and doesn’t move to the relative anonymity of a larger high school until the end of Year 8, having come to terms with their new self and having prepared for the challenges ahead.

It’s not all swings, there are roundabouts too, of course. Yes, there is more specialist teaching in key stage 2, which is great for developing a broad and balanced curricular experience, however, there can be more nonspecialist teaching in key stage 3 as a result. That said, specialist subject leadership from upper key stage 2 onwards goes quite some way to mitigating this, especially with a CPD programme that values department-led approaches to school improvement.

The school system in England has never been more diverse than it is right now, with free schools, academies,

local authority schools, special schools, alternative provision, first schools, infants and junior schools, primaries, secondaries, faith schools, large MATs across wide geographic areas, small MATs made up of local pyramids, some of which include middle schools. Being a minority in such a diverse sector, most middle schools subscribe to the National Middle Schools Forum.

The National Middle Schools Forum works hard to ensure practice in the three-tier system is discussed and developed to be reflective and improving. They work with the DfE and Ofsted to ensure the middle school experience is more widely understood by those that make policy.

So, how do middle schools hold up to scrutiny in an accountability system they don’t sit so neatly with? It turns out, despite the two transitions (or perhaps because of them) that middle

schools perform well.

The proportion of middle schools deemed to be good or better by Ofsted has remained stable over the last 5 years at 83%, comparing favourably to secondaries (75%) and not far short of primaries (87%). (Taken from NMSF Middle School report card 202) While performance of middle schools at KS2 has been comparable with that of primaries, progress measures have been less favourable. A report into baseline assessments (Treadaway, 2015) provides a good analysis of why this is the case and the concerns that this raises for the wider system.

Advocates of the three-tier system will always point further down the line at later outcomes as evidence for the effectiveness of the system: this table from 2018 data is typical of performance comparisons at KS4.

This bears further scrutiny before claiming that we should have a national three-tier system – for example the results might better be compared with area with similar socioeconomic profiles.

However it tells a compelling story and makes a case for considering what other benefits the three-tier system might have, and the circumstances in which it might improve outcomes for children.

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