John Bald/language and literacy

How to pass OCR nationals science

A conversation about OCR Science – myself and a pupil, aged 15.

Did you write this yourself?

Yes, the teacher helped me a bit.

How did the teacher help you?

She showed me what to copy and paste.

(Looking at a very professional powerpoint on weathering of rocks. She said "That’s a pass. If you put it into your own words, you’ll probably get a merit." I point to exfoliation on the powerpoint and ask him to read it. He can't. What does it mean?  "I haven't a clue.") 

(On a second science teacher) I just feel, like, there’s no point doing the work.  He gives us the link to click on, and that brings up the website we need to go on, and we copy and paste and add to pictures.

He does a Sir’s edit- what we’re meant to do, but in his words (he copies and pastes this too – that’s what he says he does, anyway). Then we have to delete all the words that he’s done, just leaving the headings, then copy and paste from the link on the website. Cut out the words we don’t understand, then put in words that we do understand. Some of the words I’ve never even heard of, and he says leave it, you’ll probably get a higher mark.  But you’d think the examiners would be more smart, to know that we’d copy and paste that, wouldn’t you?

But we have to delete the link before we save it.  Everyone does it.

Sometimes he puts on rapper music – Tinie Tempah – I don’t see the point in going to school, to be honest.

This is fraud - the work is not the pupils' work, but elaborately designed plagiarism. I would have reported it to OCR, but the Board's complaint procedure makes it clear that if I did so, the fraud would probably be covered up by the time it investigated it - complaints have to be addressed to the centre in the first instance, so the "work" could simply be deleted. I considered reporting it to the headteacher, but do not want to expose the pupil to victimisation.

The school's Ofsted report,  May 2011

Highly effective leadership for students with special educational needs ensures that staff receive detailed information on students’ specific needs and strategies to help support their good learning and progress.

So that's all right then. It has always been one of the main parts of a headteacher's job to make the school look good. Part of the hidden agenda of the 2005 changes to Ofsted was to make this part of Ofsted's function too. A four point scale rather than a seven point scale made it easier for a school to be rated good or outstanding, and giving Ofsted control over inspection in the private sector allowed it to be tougher on high-attaining private schools, making them move to the same criteria as state schools. Individual inspectors have looked for and told the truth when they could, but have been given less time to find it out, while being forced to pay more attention to dubious test and GCSE scores. In this case, the inspectors missed what was sitting under their noses, and it probably wasn't their fault, because they would not have had time to look - this is a big school, and they were there for two days only. We need a system that will allow them to inspect schools properly once again.  

 

Asberger's or a reading problem? Updated, 27th July 08

Peter, the twelve year old who had been diagnosed with Asberger's, among other complaints, has now completed his first year in secondary school. Following provision of overlays, and later tinted lenses through the NHS, his behaviour has improved beyond measure. He has shown no violence towards his family - formerly a major issue - or anyone else for over five months, and has shown great improvement in his language, work and co-operation with others. He is relaxed and mature. These aspects of his problem have been largely solved, and we are all confident they will not recur.

His annual review at school last week was much less encouraging. The very low targets set at the beginning of the year have mostly been reached, but new targets have not been set and were not discussed at the meeting. None of the other agencies involved in his care were invited, and there are no plans to build on his achievements by integrating him into mainstream classes. Discussion with his parents showed that the school was not meeting legal obligations to take account of the parents' and children's views, or to provide a broad and balanced curriculum. For ninety per cent of the week, the boy was being taught by teaching assistants, supposedly under the supervision of the SENCO, but in fact allowed to persist in errors - such as not rewarding good work - for months on end. All the SENCO had to say was that they "felt uncomfortable" with the parents' questions - by which they meant that the parents did not have a right to ask them.

A choice, then between legal action to force the school to do its work properly, and a move. As the capacity of the school to work properly in this area is in serious doubt, the parents decided to move their son to another school with a more flexible approach. A pity, but,as the child put it, "Why should mum and dad have to fight all the time just to try to get the school to teach me properly?"

New Ofsted said of the school:

The many students with particular learning or behavioural needs achieve exceptionally well and all gain national qualifications. Students who join the college after failing elsewhere often achieve very well.

New Ofsted should be ashamed of itself.

Update - 27th July.

 

 

  Peter is making good progress with Spanish. In two weeks, he has learned the days of the week, to count to 12, and colours. He enjoyed working on Beauty and the Best from Beelingua's excellent Little Tails series, and has stared on Cinderella. He understands masculine and feminine in Spanish, and yesterday did well on picking out masculine and feminine words. The idea that he was not capable of learning a language has been disproved in two weeks.

Tables are hard. The reason for learning them is to help with larger calculations, where they allow much faster estimation than simply counting in multiples. But it's easier to count in multiples than to keep your place in the progression of a table, so schools often take a shortcut. Peter has worked hard on tables, and is now quite fluent in 2s, and making progress on 3s and 4s. Considering that his problems prevented him from receiving a primary education, this is good progress. We worked on the first paragraph of Douglas Bader's Fight for the Skies, which his dad had found for him at a boot sale. Douglas Bader is a good person for Peter to be interested in.

The consequences of not being able to read - and how to tackle them.

We have met the young man at the centre of this posting before. He is eleven, and transferred to secondary school this year. His behaviour at primary school was so poor that he engaged the full panoply of a local authority's support services, including psychiatric services, and was given a very poor prognosis of survival at secondary school. He is a big lad, and had been prone to violence. His target for English at the end of his first year (Year 7) was Level 2c - the bare minimum expected of seven-year-olds. He was effectively starting secondary school without having received a primary education.

The root of his problem was sensitivity to light, which had prevented him from learning to read, and given him a life of frustration and misery, which he had taken out through extreme misbehaviour, frequently reducing his class teacher to tears. A hospital had suggested light sensitivity as an issue. I followed this with an assessment using the Institute of Optometry screening kit, and, five months later, he received his tinted lenses on the NHS. I've been seeing him for a weekly lesson, with his father present. His reading has improved to the extent that we were able to teach him to read the dinosaurs chapter in The Dangerous Book for Boys, and Queen Elizabeth's speech to her troops at Tilbury. Both well above 2c - he reached 2b on the school's assessment by October. He has had no serious disciplinary problems at school other than an over-reaction to being teased by other pupils. At home, his behaviour is unrecognisable. We've used a series of targets for civil language, absence of violence, work and co-operation, and this week he scored perfect 10s on each for the first time  He has not shown violent behaviour for nine weeks.

His father's estimate on his reading is that it has "improved tenfold", but the consequences of hiis lack of primary education, particularly of his lack of reading, are immense. To begin with, he has little or no general knowledge, and knows very few words. Looking at a Battle of Britain video, he talked about "the man" for any general, or "the teams" for armed forces, using the vocabulary of his everyday life. He didn't know that the Spitfire was a fighter, and thought that the Germans had Lancaster bombers - they'd been in the papers the previous week and every bomber was a Lancaster as a result. At the same time, he picked out as an important point Dowding's - "the Man's" - decision not to send more fighters to France when it would have jeopardised the UK's defence.(I'd asked him to pick out three points from the video, and say why they were important. This was definitely one of them.)

The approach I'm using is to  build up his vocabulary through discussion, each time going back to something he knows, and refining it, making sure the thinking behind each new word comes from him, and using analogy. For example, his first thought on being asked what "the man" did was that he was PM. So, I asked him who he'd been advising not to send the fighters, and built up the idea that that man was PM. So, what did "the man" do? He was chief. Chief of what? This took us to a discussion of fighters and bombers. I explained that bombers were part of bomber command, and that there was a coastal command. What, then might fighters be part of? We agreed, fighter command. We agreed an alteration to his notes (using Word) and I gave him a printout to practise for for next week. We discussed the video again, and considered what might be two more important points. "Knowing when they were coming and where they were..." was his next one. So, progress.  But every piece in the jigsaw still has to be put in place. To be continued.

Asberger's - or a reading problem, 2

I've now been working for a term and a half with an eleven-year-old who had been assessed variously as having autism, asbergers, and various other conditions over a period of years, on account of his impossible behaviour. His parents' file of these assessments is four inches thick, and the result of his difficulties was that he effectively received no primary education at all.

His real problem was sensitivity to light. Following screening with the Institute of Optometry kit (£50), a grey overlay enabled him to focus on a page of print, and so learn to read. He now has blue tinted glasses, and has settled into secondary school with no major behavioural problems. Using the techniques in my book, Using Phonics to Teach Reading and Spelling (Sage), we have made big inroads into his reading difficulties, and he is reading The Dangerous Book for Boys. He has, for example, read and understood the technical terms for the geological dating of dinosaurs. We still have huge gaps - last week's big success was learning the 2x table - but the lad is now able to start his education, albeit at the age of 11.

To be continued...

Sensitivity to light 2

Professor Arnold Wilkins, whose book, Reading Through Colour, is the best compact description of the issues involving sensitivity to light, has finally got the issue onto the agenda of the BBC, with an interview with Libby Purves and a news item at the following link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7257617.stm

I continue to meet people whose lives are wrecked because this issue is not checked. The latest is a lady in her late 20s who cannot read more than one or two paragraphs at a time, who suffers headaches every single night, and who had to leave her examination hall because of the severe discomfort caused by fluorescent lighting, leaving her with no qualifications. An overlay produced an immediate benefit. The failure to check this condition, with so much evidence in the public domain, now amounts to negligence.

A second recent case involves a boy of 11, with a long history of "assessment" as having every disorder under the sun, who is now settling into secondary school well having received no primary education at all - his life was one of continuous frustration and misbehaviour, causing distress to all around him. He was excluded from school several times, and his language and shouting often left his teacher in tears. Towards the end of his primary education, his headteacher made matters worse by not allowing him to use in school an overlay provided by his local hospital. He is reading the Dinosaur section of the Dangerous Book for Boys with me - he could not read at all last September - and had beaten his end of year English target by November of the first term. There is plenty of work to do, but at least we can now do it. He has had no significant problems with behaviour at school, and his behaviour at home has also improved beyond measure, though it is not yet where it needs to be.  

There are many more, including teachers who were unable to work under fluorescent light, children whose reading speed has increased tenfold, and people who have had relief from devastating migraine - by which I mean having to take days off work at a time. The Institute of Optometry screening kit costs £60ish - google them - and will let any teacher make an initial screening just by following clear instructions. The kit needs to become part of every school's screening and assessment procedures for reading problems.

Asperger's - or a reading problem?

Over the past year, I've had four children referred to me who have been assessed as having Asperger's syndrome. All have responded well to the teaching methods outlined in Chapter 7 of Using Phonics to Teach Reading and Spelling, to the extent that there is a serious possibility that their problem has been misdiagnosed. Each case was different - one extremely intelligent 10 year old was bored with teaching that did not fully extend him, and another of the same age was, well, a little lazy. A child entering secondary school was sensitive to light to the extent that it caused headaches and blurring of print, while a six year old was simply confused and frustrated at teaching that relied too much on guessing from pictures or from the first letter in a word.

I'm very interested in working with parents whose child has been assessed as having Asperger's syndrome, and who do not feel that the diagnosis is reflected in their own experience - you can't have Asperger's at school and not at home, for example. If this sounds like your son  or daughter, please get in touch.