A Curriculum for Excellence...evidence?

Evidence? What's the use?

2008-04-16T20:07:00.003+01:00

One might well ask. Well I certainly will. What is the point of trying so hard to be creative and engage the children in learning and in trying to extend the ways in which we can help make them, as ACfE demands, responsible citizens if The Scottish Government are going to undermine vast amounts of good work?

The previous administration, rather commendably said this. In summary, more PE in schools = good thing; more PE teachers to be appointed; 2 hours of PE for all.

At the weekend however, "MINISTERS ARE scrapping physical education targets - after councils claimed that giving children more exercise does not make them fitter"

Eh?

I could rant and rant about this all evening and indeed I've restrained myself from blogging about this for a couple of days as I just couldn't quite put into words my annoyance, frustration and incredulity at the lastest missive from the Holyrood administration.

Although I'm no great fan of hers, Labour's Margaret Curran said it best when she suggested that "With the SNP, the left leg doesn't know what the right leg is doing - and neither leg is getting any exercise."

There's loads out there on the web just now about this and plenty on the blogs too so I'm not going to add any more as I should really go and do some physical activity since the SNP aren't going to insist on just quite so much in school anymore. Please read what's out there, digest it at your leisure and promptly ignore such crass Executive/Government backpeddaling and instead make sure you keep giving those children their two hours!

If I might at this juncture point you in the direction of Article 29(a) of the UN Convention on the rights of the child:

States Parties agree that the education of the child shall be directed to: The development of the child's personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential.

http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.2192937.0.anger_after_snp_uturn_on_school_fitness_targets.php
http://news.scotsman.com/education?articleid=3976752
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7346369.stm
http://greatbigsky.blogspot.com/

Break in transmission...

2008-04-09T22:11:00.002+01:00

Aside from the natural break of the Easter holidays (Higland went early, 20th March - 7th April) I've been a bit preoccupied of late with possible moves in different directions. I'll get this evidence gathering right back on track as soon as I've sorted out what on earth I'll be doing in my new job! Follow the progress here for the time being...

RME - where does it fit in?

2008-03-18T16:01:00.003Z

I've decided on "responsible citizens" for today's efforts. Though it could just as easily be filed under any of the other three! Who says cross-curricular's hard?

AiFL

2008-03-17T13:02:00.005Z

Hmm. I've blogged about this before but having Twittered (Tweeted?) about it on Friday at the AiFL day in Inverness I thought I'd say some more.

For a curriculum which purports to be heading towards Active Learning and for an initiative (AiFL) which puts itself firmly at the heart ("embedded" being the current buzz word) of said curriculum, how is it still possible for a roomful of teachers to be talked at rather than interacted with?

I don't wish to appear rude or disrespectful towards a man who's clearly a respected authority on such matters, but it does strike me as odd that something which appears to be so firmly at the core of AiFL (namely "meaningful dialogue") is not firmly at the core of presentations on the subject.

Perhaps the very nature of presenting to a large group is unsuited to engaging in dialogue but surely we could use the formative assessment-based models of "think-pair-share" to discuss ideas and engage with the concepts? Could meaningful links be better made between theory and practice if we attempted to learn by doing?

How can we expect our learners in the classroom to be motivated by this area if we ourselves are turned off by the way in which it's presented? Or perhaps it's a clever and cunning ruse to make us examine our practice closely and to say "now, I reckon an active approach would be better here, think I'll try it back in class..."

Or am I being too hopeful?

Lousie Hayward made a lot of sense though. Which was nice. I can now use the phrase "systemic compatibility" and know what it means AND know that it's a useful concept.

Edit: Here's the stuff I was after about practicing what is preached...Doug Dickinson (see 9th March entry) and Will Richardson.

Successful? Confident?

2008-03-10T23:27:00.003Z

Having fun, more to the point!

So, on the PE Course a while back we looked at Y-Dance which is a way of engaging children in mored, shall we say, "modern" dance than they may normally be exposed to at school. We also had a rather fantastic creative input where we tied up language and dance and tried to draw out what the children were thinking of when they saw certain things - in this case a rollercoaster. The idea was that they would take the words (swooping, screaming, spinning) and turn them into "movements".

Still with me?

Well, yesterday my PE class used The Beach Boys "Do It Again" from the film Happy Feet to come up with some movements related to "penguins" and "dancing" - the two central themes of the film, according to the kids. (And who could argue?) Movements invented, they then paired up and put two moves together in time to the music, then paired up again to put four moves together.

There's SO much going on in what they did that I could write an essay but for me they were all smiling, all engaged, all on task and all enjoying PE. Successful? Confident? Effective? You decide... Happy Feet in PE

Promoting the 4 capacities...

2008-03-06T22:35:00.003Z

How does that square with the attitude of one English Primary School?

I'm really not sure what to say about this. I'm - for once - speechless. What are others thinking?

Jim Henderson, although not specifically blogging about this story, had this to say.

Meme: passion quilt

2008-03-06T16:28:00.004Z

Hmm. Not sure about this, seems a bit "chain-lettery" to me but in the spirit of online collaboration I shall persevere. I can see the pupils liking it though.

Louise Jones "tagged" (not sure about that either) me with this.

I think this is brilliant. Confucius said "It is better to play than do nothing." Last term we had workers from The Yard visiting us to run play workshops with children and staff.

Some people may question the value of play but as a keen reader of Pat Kane's Play Ethic I can see only too clearly how if can be - and is - useful as a learning tool and "social glue."

What's this all about then? Well:

1. Think about what you are passionate about teaching your students.

2. Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.

3. Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry

4. Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.

My chosen five? Tricky and I don't know if they'll thank me but have a go anyway Alan Stewart, Dorothy Coe, Pat Kane, Ian Stanger and John Connell.

Feedback books...

2008-03-03T22:37:00.000Z

Comments appreciated on an element of "Successful Learners"...

Other evidence hunters...

2008-03-03T14:59:00.002Z

There was a comment on the blog from Dorothy Coe, a teacher in the Borders, all about the issue of evidence in ACfE. She made some really interesting points which rang true with me too.
Having just had the inspectors in, I was all too aware of the need for paper-trails and evidence and was - I must be honest - a little apprehensive of the lack of "paper-based" evidence of my class' work over the year so far. A direct consequence of ACfE.

That having been the reason for this blog in the first place I decided just to go with it and made the HMIe team aware of both the blog and the folders in the class which I update with a version of my posts here under the 4capacities headings (see Responsible Citizens, Effective Contributors, Successful Learners and Confident Individuals) so that the children can see them - Blogger being blocked in school! The inspectors seemed neither here nor there with the whole evidence gathering thing. Meaning that either (a) I'm wasting my time with this, or (b) they just took it as a normal part of what I'm doing and accepted it. Unlike the submission of my PGCE assignments, I'm hoping for "b"!

From thinking to teaching practice with CPD

2008-02-27T16:25:00.002Z

Hmm. Not sure about the title but there's another set of my musings on PE & ACfE in the GTCS magazine this month. (Not sure about the picture either, what is it that's interesting me off to the left?)

GTCS Magazine, February 2008.

We'll this has got to be good news surely...

2008-02-27T15:20:00.002Z

In a further bid to make children more active, more often, the Scottish Government yesterday announced its plans to increase participation in sport and physical activity amongst girls.

Okay, so this is not strictly a CfE item but it does, once again, show the value being placed on the "non traditional" view of what school is "for." At the risk of a terrible sporting related pun, fair play to the folks at Holyrood.

There's loads more that could be said about this but I imagine Lousie Jones will have a good health related slant on it and she's far better qualified than I am on this sort of thing!

Turning learning on its head...

2008-02-22T12:41:00.003Z

Much excitement in PE this week.

In search of excellence...

2008-02-14T22:15:00.003Z

Still on that journey, huh? Anyway, I didn't (don't?) want this blog to be anything other than a look at evidence gathering in the "new" curriculum. However there are issues impacting on us as teachers which, I think, will directly affect how the curriculum is delivered.

If one of the key notions of ACfE is the integration of different curricular areas in order to enliven and enrich the experience for learners (it is a key notion, right?) then it strikes me as fairly obvious that the approach teachers take to both introducing and teaching subjects - and/or teaching across the curriculum - will be central to the way in which that information (or that "experience") is interpreted and subsequently utilised by the pupils.

Phew. Long winded way of saying something I said before. Ho hum.

Back to the point: basically I agree with and endorse - not that he needs it - the ideas of Richard Bailey with regards to the notion of learning as problem solving. It strikes me now, having been both teacher and, in a previous life, sports coach that if you have no need for the learning experience then you're going to take very little from it. In other words, if there is no "problem" to be solved then why are you learning decontextualised solutions?

Professor Bailey put this into context with the simple analogy of a traditional basketball drill: the chest pass. Two rows of participants, firing off passes to a partner with the possible reward of a game at the end. Loads of perfect chest passes result. Along comes the game. The ball rarely makes its target. "Stop, stop, stop!" exhorts the bewildered coach. "Why aren't you passing like I showed you?" "Oh," say the players, "So that's why we were doing it..."

I've heard him speak before and one of his books is the core text on the PE course but it doesn't stop the cringe inducing feeling of "whoops - think I've done that in class" every time he makes this sort of analogy. The key question, though, as a reflective practitioner must be "how can I use this notion in class?" I've found the answer lies in keeping things simple. I ask myself a question when planning an activity, a lesson or a topic: what use will doing this activity/practice/scenario be to the children. If an answer's not immediately forthcoming which doesn't involve contrivance on a massive scale then I think of another activity/practice or scenario which will be.

Reading that back I realise I've made that sound like a lot of work for myself - and anyone else adopting such an approach. But it isn't really, and its value can't be overstated. Time is so precious, I think it pays to ask oneself, "Am I wasting mine and that of my pupils by doing this?"

Interesting "what's this learning malarkey all about?" type link.

Well, that's better...

2008-02-07T19:38:00.001Z

After the trauma of the HMIe visit - don't get me started - it was fantastic and quite uplifting to go to today's PE inservice day at Inverness Royal Academy.

As part of my PGCE PE course I'd been introduced to the, for me, revolutionary thinking of Richard Bailey, and I'd heard him speak at the launch of the PE course. His thinking around problem-solving based learning have impacted on my whole approach to teaching, not simply in PE so I was excited at the prospect of hearing him speak again.

Anyone who speaks "common sense" is always, I think, worth listening to and even more so today when my spirits were in need of a lift following the last three and a half hectic weeks. Prof. Bailey didn't really add anything new to my knowledge today but rather he did something which for me was far more valuable - he confirmed that (in his opinion) what we're already doing is good stuff and fits in to the findings of huge swathes of research across six continents. Always nice to be told "good work, keep it up" - if it works for our learners in school then why not for us as teachers?

Also good was the vast amount of interesting stuff going on around Health Promoting Schools which it turns out will shortly come under the "Health & Wellbeing" agenda of ACfE - on whose outcomes we had what was, to be blunt, a rather dry presentation. Oh well... it was nice to have a chat with the Development Manager, Louise Jones, about how all this stuff should perhaps aim to be more firmly embedded rather than being a box-ticking "add-on". More common sense.

Mind you, difficult to get information across in a short space of time when there's so much to say.

Of less excitement, perhaps, was the continuing absence of any real commitment on the part of Highland Council in relation to implementing the "Secondary based - primary focused" model of PE delivery, in spite of the (seemingly) successful pilot in the Fortrose area.

Watch this space?

Skype-ing with Tommy Cooper...

2008-02-05T20:16:00.000Z

"Doctor, I can't pronounce my F's, T's and H's." "Well you can't say fairer than that then"

What does all that have to do with ACfE? Well you may ask. It's really the punchline I was interested in. What are we looking to do with some of these enriching, cross-curricular activities (or "experiences" if you will)? There's a fairly comprehensive list which the kids came up with on the impact of their Skype Q&A with the Eorpa team today. Examining it reads, I think, like a bit of a wish-list for some of the things we'd (as staff) hope the kids would "get" from ACfE.

"...you can't say fairer..." etc, etc.

Assessment is for...?

2008-02-04T22:38:00.000Z

Learning? Is it? I'm still trying to embed this notion within my own head never mind in my own practice. Too much jargon clouds the issue I suspect and it can be all too easy to begin to lose sight of the point of the whole thing - enhancing the children's learning and trying to provide a happy, stimulating environment within the class and school.

Anyway, as a small step towards ensuring that the learning is in some way valid (whose criteria?) I'm trying to focus on getting those all-important learning objectives up for the children on a regular basis.

This point could be argued all day/week/year - indeed on my initial degree course (a BA in Sport in the Community) we spent seemingly endless hours on coaching modules where we looked at ideas around objectives, targets and aims. Asking questions like "are objectives stepping stones towards aims or is it the other way round?" and big ideas like that. I'm unsure to this day if we ever got an answer but I'm willing to consider - and try - anything which might benefit the learners.

For that reason I'm going to keep a note of all the "We Are Learning To" points (thanks Shirley Clarke for the jargon but I think we all had the idea anyway...) and post them along with the "evidence" pictures. We shall see how it goes.

Assessment is for Life. Not just for classroom observations. Discuss...

Learning successfully in RME

2008-02-04T22:36:00.000Z

New post on this at SuccessfulLearners.

I've seen the future...

2008-01-24T22:32:00.000Z

...and it's Skype shaped. I'm liking the look of that very much indeed. We've been approached by a television programme with a view to linking up with them for a question & answer session to help us with our topic work and they'd like to do it as a Skype video linkup.

Up until today I'd not even bothered looking at Skype, thinking that GLOW would take care of the sort of video-conferencey type thing. However, the slow implementation of aforementioned GLOW by Highland council has meant that we need to look at other ways of doing things.

Skype looks simple, effective and user (child?) friendly. On top of that (in true Formative Assessment style) we'll be learning to:

use technology to communicate
research questions to ask others
talk & listen effectively

Successful learners? Effective contributors? Confident individuals? Responsible citizens?

(Rhetorical questions?)

Effective Contributors

2007-12-20T12:59:00.000Z

I think this "experience" is in the "right" place. Does it matter? After all, it's the way you teach it, right?

Stop-motion animations.

How is this going to work?

2007-12-17T16:15:00.001Z

I'm not entirely sure of the best format for this, though I suppose I'll learn as I go along and amend procedures accordingly, in line with the very best principles of formative assessment and A Curriculum for Excellence, I'm sure you'll agree.

What I think I'd like to do is to put up postings which share the learning intentions and success criteria of a "learning experience" and to accompany this with photos/videos/podcasts showcasing what the children have been doing and how they've interacted with the experience.

This will allow me to make evaluative, formative statements or comments and this will - hopefully - enable me to inform my future practice.

Well, it sounds good...

"Call for major education shake up..."

2007-12-10T22:36:00.000Z

What, another one?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7135889.stm

This really is depressing stuff...surely ACfE is attempting to address some of these issues or perhaps I've completely misinterpreted it? It's late and I'm tired - lots of panto practice at school at the moment! - so I'll not spend long on this for the moment, suffice to say that whilst I appreciate (notice I didn't say "think it's right") that people will always look for results and some level of accountability as a measure of teaching and learning, I'd have to question the need for yet more "shake ups" and "initiatives."

When does one get the chance to interact and learn with one's class if one is spending time 'firefighting' paperwork? Just a thought...

Ah, but is it really schoolwork?

2007-12-05T16:28:00.000Z

That seems to be one of the main questions asked about the new Curriculum for Excellence when parents and the like find out about some of the "non-traditional" things their children are doing in - and out of - class.

Without waffling on about the Four Capacities of ACfE, I think it's fair to say that it presents some challenges for teachers in terms of how we can assess the learning that's taking place. Indeed, it's also fair to say that it presents challenges - and opportunities - in terms of thinking about what we need to assess.

The idea of assessing what we value and valuing what we assess must surely be one of the guiding principles in designing so-called "experiences" for learners in school.

The new curriculum challenges many preconceived ideas about what is taught and how it is taught. Debates rage around "style over content" and questions will be heard in many a staffroom about whether or not any of this is actually teaching the children anything.

I would argue that this is surely the very point of the exercise - are we really trying to teach them "things" (facts, processess, procedures, etc) or are we trying to empower them to think for themselves and take control of their own learning?

This could easily be dismissed by saying "of course it's about empowerment...give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day but show him how to fish..." etc, etc. However, there will always be those who will - rightly - contend that the basics (whatever they may be deemed to be depending on the school/local authority/political climate) must be in place before you can do anything else.

Quite. But who says that once the foundations are in you have to build all the houses in the same way? To stretch a building analogy, I think that ACfE should have Grand Designs for all learners; I hope to look in this blog at some of the ways in which I try to challenge the children in my class, to empower them, to value each and every individual contribution on its own merits and to give my take on some of the ways I think we can gather evidence of what's useful or not.