TeacherBee

This post follows on from Saturday School - What about the Gap? - Part 1 The second session I chose was led by Mary Myatt and entitled 'Curriculum: Controversies, Concepts and Conversations. She began by talking about some of the thorny issues that crop up when curriculum development is being discussed: the notion that skills are transferable across subjects; the ever-present false dichotomy of knowledge versus skills when they are intrinsically linked; the privileging of activity and task completion over thinking and learning (should we ask 'Have you learned?' instead of 'Have you finished?'?), leading to what she called a 'cardboard curriculum'; the superficial links that can be made in the attempt to plan cross-curricular themes or topics; the loss of entitlement to a broad and balanced curriculum and access to powerful knowledge for pupils who are too often taken out of class for interventions (this one really hit home).  Mary spoke about the ne...

29th February seems such a long time ago! It was a miserable Saturday morning, with Storm Jorge making his presence felt, as 300-or-so teachers and other edu-bods assembled for the inaugural ResearchEd Cymru. Why on earth would we give up half of our precious weekend to, well, go to school? The idea of teachers undertaking PL activities in their own time seems to divide our profession, even though it is quite clearly an individual choice. What I have found over time is that the more open I am to learning and being challenged, the more I want to learn and be challenged!  The impressive line-up of speakers made it very difficult to choose just 6 of the 30 sessions to attend but as the day progressed what struck me most was the unexpected thread I discovered -  What can and should schools and teachers be doing to narrow the 'disadvantage gap'?  In Wales, despite the focus on this for a number of years, the gap has not narrowed and it is highly likely that at th...

The past few weeks have, for teachers all over the world, been a test of character, both professional and personal. We kept things going as normally as we possibly could for our pupils for several weeks while around us, others were retreating to the relative safety of home-working. We tried our best to give reassurance in response to anxious questions whilst being honest that we, nor anyone else, could actually answer many of them. All the time, we had to put to one side any anxiety of our own. And then things came to what felt like a harsh and abrupt end.  Now we find ourselves physically cut off from our classes and colleagues, trying to ensure that some kind of learning can go on at a distance; hoping that parents and carers at home will be able to support that; struggling to hold on to the relationships we had spent half a year or more nurturing.  Some of us are also involved in providing much-needed childcare for key workers' families, either in our individua...