Visit to Chicken Shed

I love supporting local charities, so we organised a trip to take our whole school to Chicken Shed’s production of ‘The Adventure to OZ’. It is an amazing organisation – they take children with every kind of Special Educational Needs and they have parts in the show. They also offer courses for children with SEND in their further education that are excellent. They are like our school, totally inclusive.

I was given a list of children who didn’t want to go on the trip and of course I went to see if I could persuade them to go. In speaking to a boy in Year 4, it went a little like this…

“How come you do not want to come on this trip? It will be really good and all of your friends are going.”

“I don’t really want to come.”

“Oh, Ok… how come?”

“Well, why would I want to go and see some poor chickens in a shed?”

With that I laughed and went on to explain to him that there would be no chickens and that the shed is actually a pretty big theatre, we managed to persuade him to go. Unfortunately, the actual show was not as good as usual but we have seen some excellent Christmas themed productions there. Fingers crossed for next Year.

Numicon locks – this is a super practical idea which has lots of scope. Basically the pupils can match the key to the corresponding lock. The lock also has the number of dots drawn on it so the children can see it in lots of different ways. It can also be used for multiplication – the five red numicon pieces equal the two blue numicon ten pieces. The keys at the bottom can correspond with an answer in the lock in numicon. For example ‘1 more than 8’ can correspond to a lock with nine on it which also can improve the pupil’s use of mathematical language.

Monster Adding Machine – I saw this in our Reception class this week and the kids loved it. They were studying the Gruffalo so there was a focus on monsters. The idea is to solve an addition sum by putting the number of fluffy balls in the left hand cylinder (in this case 3) and then putting the second number in the right hand cylinder (in this case 2). The total number comes out of the monster’s mouth for the children count (5). Thumbs up to the Reception teacher.

Getting Maths Right...

I cannot recommend the NCTEM (https://www.ncetm.org.uk/) document and its principles more! Having worked in primary schools for nearly two decades, we are finally getting it right. The documents in the National Centre in the Teaching of Mathematics are excellent. These include a new Maths Hub which provides planning for teachers, an assessment document for each Year Group (that also gives examples for mastery) and useful teaching resources including instructional videos.

The NCTEM believe in promoting future mathematical learning built on solid foundations and that given enough time every  pupil is capable of achieving in maths. They have set a curriculum that has one set of mathematical concepts for all and have set a series of pedagogical practices that keep the class working together on the same topic. “Teaching is focussed, rigorous and thorough, to ensure that learning is sufficiently embedded and sustainable over time”.

And Yes… this works!

The methodology is basic - concrete, pictorial and abstract in that order. Most maths teaching in the past started with the abstract: for example, what is 45 + 17? what is 2/3 of 36? Or 20cm is how many metres? Starting with the abstract has proven not to equal understanding in our kids.

Concrete - This method starts with the use of physical resources to start such as Numicon, Cuisenaire and Base Ten materials. However, you can use anything concrete that you can count.

Pictorial – the pupils actually draw what they have created from the concrete step. This is an important process that the children do want to skip but it visually locks the concepts into their minds.

Abstract – they write the sum and solve it. In reality the kids would have already solved this in the first two steps but writing and saying the sum out loud is perfect for learning.

Things to note though –

• -        This has to be supplemented with a real life problem. For example, there are 4 aliens on a spaceship, they pick up 5 more aliens from Mars. How many aliens are on the spaceship?
• -        Ofsted are not looking for reams and reams of ‘ticked’ work so allow children to complete their sums in their own time. You know the children in your class.
• -        The time for teaching quick fix tricks has ended! It is all about understanding and applying to another example.
• -        Get the children to represent the concrete in a number of ways. Do not allow them to rely on just one resource.
• -     Pupil Voice - allow children time to discuss and explain how they have completed their sum. This is so important to achieve mastery.
• -        Rote learning of times tables does not work for all children. Teach connections! E.g. 2 x 8 is 16 so 4 x 8 is? You can obviously double your answer. Why not then do 8 x 8. Take away 8 from your answer you have 7 x 8. This can lead to learning the 32 times table, the world of maths is your oyster, if you can work out the connections.
• -        I do suggest that teachers teach place value for the majority of the Autumn Term. It is the basis of all maths and you reap rewards for the rest of the year.

This methodology has reformed the practice in our school – the results and rate of progress are amazing. And Yes… this works!

Being on the SLT and the constant battle with data

Frustrating, frustrating, frustrating… dealing with numbers instead of children has become a daily task for every stakeholder in a school. The constant manipulation of numbers would make a spin doctor go dizzy or make a fat cat thin.  We are creating data for Ofsted inspectors to analyse but we all know the strengths and weaknesses in our schools without crunching digits. The Raiseonline document has become so complicated that confidence intervals of even one child (being disadvantaged, low, mid or high) is now more significant than ever.

Being in the position of being a leader in a one-form entry school with 58% boys, 52% FSM, 62% EMA and 21% SEND I have become rather skilled at producing data that presents our data in a good light. But… there is only so far this can go. We have a resource provision for ASC, something that all the staff in our school adore, but they are rarely capable of taking a Phonics, KS1, or KS2 SATs test and yes they all count towards our data.

This sentence makes me cross - each child in our school is worth 3.3%. A typical class is now: two kids with autism, the pupil that has just arrived in the country with no english, the boy who has severe behavioural issues, and the girl who is a very talented dancer. But give any of them a reading test that a 14 year old would find difficult and then your highest possible score without anything else going wrong is 83.5%. 83.5% is our 100%! Then add those six children who are massively borderline (who would be fine achieving the old school 4c) and then the story is 63.7%. Far too close to the threshold. A percentage score that would make any leader nervous.

Luckily, in schools we can always produce evidence which proves that our progress is outstanding. This is a day by day, month by month, year by year battle. These poor kids are going to interventions during the afternoon lessons, after school study groups, 1:1 sessions, Saturday schools and holiday schools. The curriculum for certain children has become so narrow. No wonder that wonderful teachers are leaving the profession in their hundreds and thousands and that some children feel the pressure of school or become completely disinterested in learning.

So ,lets take the best-case scenario 83.5% - even with my bad back, I would do cartwheels and a backflip if we achieved this. And then I realise that all our local schools have achieved in the high 90s. They effect of these results cannot be understated. A few of our WAGD children (yes we have a few) will look to move to these schools, if our message to the parents was not so strong and then they would be replaced by lovely children, whose attainment is frankly not comparable. The league tables are so destructive and obviously completely false in what they are reporting. Do they tell the whole story of a school? No. Prospective parents would not choose our school just on a number. We can remove certain children from our data such as the SEND children but why should we. For example, one of our autistic children learnt to control their behaviour in stressful situations such as lining up for lunch and sitting in assembly. The other has managed to form a relationship with a friend, the dancer led her troupe to perform skilfully in front of an audience of over 200 and the boy with no English is now speaking in sentences.  Huge achievements and amazing breakthroughs that are not assessed or are no longer seen as important.

In September, I was presented with a school profile, which ranked our school for attainment and progress in EYFS, KS1 and KS2. A week into the new school year and I am having a conversation with a very talented teacher and a great EYFS leader that for Average Point Score we were ranked 80^th out of 85 schools. Yes, a school from somewhere in the Borough has to be 80^th but how does that make our school community feel? The teacher and TA’s working six days a week, a couple of hours each evening and during the holidays. Not that anyone reading this would know but in the cohort of 30 in which this data was created – there were 4 Send children (two with EHCPs), 19 FSM children, 17 children with EAL and 5 boys with behavioural issues. The teacher and her team achieved amazing things with this cohort to be hit with 80^th . Highly unmotivating.  Next in the school year for many schools is pupil progress meetings where we target set for the next year. We ask teachers to squeeze every percent out of their classes because of local and national data, heaping pressure on teachers and TA’s and most importantly children.

I do believe that by the end of a pupil’s primary school that every child should be able to read, write and complete maths tasks. However, the curriculum has been squeezed because of data – the children do reading, writing and maths for a majority of the day. The long-term affect is we will produce good readers, able writers and good mathematicians, which I do agree is important. But what about history, geography, music, PE, RE, art, D&T, MFL, PSHE and the sciences? What many schools have done to fit these into a packed week is to teach them through English and Maths, but isn’t it a real shame for our children that this is the case. Real life experiences and research are highly underused. This is where the Early Years practice has got this completely correct – a child centred and initiated curriculum. Imagine that, tasks and projects that stimulate a child’s interest and curiosity. I applaud any practitioner that works in this manner. The thought would make the Secretary of Education itchy. Why can we not let kids jump in puddles, search for mini-beasts or have a teddy bears picnic. The truth is that kids write about them and not necessarily ‘do’ them. A sad state of affairs.

The lesson to learn with data is that is never tells the true story of what the reality actually is. As professionals, we will still battle with data on a daily basis in but in the heart of every teacher is the progress and needs of every individual pupil.