🧵 Lots of talk around workbook design as a way not just to create a shared language at departmental level, but also minimise workload so teachers can focus on the important stuff: tailoring their lessons for their students.
A few materials to help ⬇️
Spending some time in departments discussing how to create a format that supports your subject and builds familiarity and knowledge over time.
But this is a fantastic synthesis across a range of subjects from @amy6313 who adds a much valued voice to the argument for workbooks as core materials of the enacted curriculum:
Like anything, implementation of workbooks can lead to various ( I would argue, understandable) misconceptions around:
- the workbook acts as curricular constraint;
- opportunity-cost for staff workload
- ensuring quality
- production of materials means curriculum is complete
Putting together a curricular infrastructure will help here.
💭Who are experts in what and how do you know?
Undertaking a subject(not exam Q!) audit and contextualising this with a discussion is helpful.
💭 how will this work be undertaken in a way that doesn’t impact workload?
Anything that’s good for curriculum but bad for workload isn’t good for curriculum.
💭 how will this be implemented in a manageable way?
Trial with one class, one year group; review, scale up.
💭how will we support teachers to make use of the workbooks?
Consider time for collaborative planning, making where time not spent creating materials can be repurposed to thinking about attending to the purposeful stuff
This then might enable the opportunity to be strategic in cluster planning, with experts in one aspect paired with those less expert in that particular area of the subject. Crib sheets created also support teachers with subject specific PD, or teacher guides:
A huge caveat: anticipate the need for adaptation. Workbooks do not equate to a complete curriculum, because such a thing doesn’t exist. View this as merely a way of redirecting time from becoming Experts of Documents to Experts of Subject.
I rarely speak about the fact that I was a school refuser. I found it difficult to attend for many reasons, that, given the opportunity, I opted out of doing so.
I was not quite sporadic enough to be a major concern until later in Year 11, and managed a brilliant set of GCSEs because I was gifted with a month of study leave. By the time I reached the end of my A levels, I was attending around the 30% mark.
There were three things that made my mind up in the morning:
- how safe I would be that day
- who I would see
- what I would learn
🧵 New teachers! Prepare for teaching this term by knowing:
▪️Retrieval isn’t repetitive if you are a novice- as long as it’s useful, of course
▪️explanations are at their most beautiful without waffle - and that’s hard when you’re a subject expert
▪️it’s difficult to apply learning if you have not seen this exemplified- which is why examples delivered by an expert are invaluable
▪️knowing the common pitfalls and signposting them demystifies the subject for less confident students - it’s a gift to know this in advance
You can do this in a manageable way by considering he following aspects when planning ahead:
▪️look at the final assessment for the unit you are about to teach, completing it yourself (and/or asking teachers in your department for exemplar responses from last academic year)
T&L principles are commonplace but often miss the conceptual framework required to ensure it is not a matter of pedagogy before subject.
Whilst simpler to convey to teachers as an agreed lesson to lesson format, they can sometimes lead to huge distortions..
Because:
i) if a teacher considers generic T&L as a sequence for teaching before subject, it’s more likely they’ll lean less on concepts that are hugely beneficial to draw attention to for students to make connections over time;
ii) there’s an increased likelihood that instead of teaching with the progression model in mind, that teaching becomes a formula that pays little attention to being responsive to what students know and can do at that given moment.
Leading principles of curriculum development are not *just* about curriculum substance..
⬇️
Curriculum design and delivery has become increasingly a matter of more than the subject. There is a danger of significant variance when we consider the role of curriculum in schools.
'Children can go all the way through secondary school, and then go bump when they
hit real demands...’
- @amanda_spielman
Children deserve the very best education, and curriculum is the vehicle by which we can achieve this with consistency to avoid a possible haphazard outcome.
There are a great deal of fads and lethal mutations hanging around as a result of curriculum development. Generic approaches to pedagogy that disregard subject specificity for instance. It not only dilutes the offer for pupils, but leads to a huge disconnect for teachers.
Whilst the substance of what we teach is critical (and in some subjects, highly contestable), it’s key to consider the how and why of curriculum as a point of fragility for curriculum development over time.
Underpinned by Dunlovsky et al., @InspiredLearn_ warns us against being lured by beautiful highlighting as an indicator of effective study #rEDSurrey22
If practice testing and spaced practice are most effective strategies, why are students not using these as often as we might hope? #rEDSurrey22