John Bald/language and literacy

Christine Blower and Synthetic Phonics

Greg Wallace in Telegraph has this to say about Christine Blower, General Secretary of the NUT:

... I appeared on breakfast television with Christine Blower, the leader of the NUT, and she criticised synthetic phonics, a proven system for improving literacy. It was only afterwards that she said she had never seen synthetic phonics being taught in a school. Here was the head of the country’s largest teaching union passing judgment on something she had not seen. This suggested that the ideology was more important than the reality. You have to use the teaching methods that work. Synthetic phonics is one, but Christine Blower hadn’t bothered to see how it worked.

This speaks for itself. Christine Blower and her ilk know nothing about education and are only interested in leftwing politics, which includes exploiting their hard-working members for political purposes.

But for the record, and at the risk of sounding like a broken one, synthetic phonics needs to be accompanied by clear explanation and practice in irregular features of English spelling if it is to work properly.

Teaching - the appliance of science

Karina McLachlain writes to me that  you need neuroscientists and respected educational psychologists in the unit. I really want a subject created at university (within the faculty of science) called 'scientific pedagogy' which will be the applicaton of science to the classroom and the creation of better methods of teaching and better curricula. I would make this subject compulsory for teachers in training and they would be forbidden from doing educational research or contributing to formation of curricula or educational policy without having studied it.

Karina is right. Much of what happens in our state and private schools is based on force of habit, personal and political prejudice, control of behaviour and pulling rank. There is a distinction to be drawn between this and downright ignorance - habit, for example, may be based on experience, which is essential, and authority is necessary if schools are to work coherently. But what we have is not good enough. Rank pulling says that the boss is right because he or she is the boss, and whether he or she is in fact right or not. This is not legitimate authority, but Diktat.

We could do without the word pedagogy, which is just a fancy term for teaching or education in general, and we would somehow need to distinguish between "respected" educational psychologists and the fee-earners who do not think about the evidence behind their conclusions, type new names into largely pre-written reports, and pontificate about problems without even trying to solve them. Much of the output of local authority psychologists, for example, is designed to reflect and legitimise the policies of their authority. These people's reports do not consitute an independent professional judgement, and often do serious harm by obscuring issues and preventing children from receiving the right forms of additional support and teaching.

Michael Gove is the first secretary of state to take a personal interest in neuroscience and in the formation of networks in the brain as the physical manifestation of learning. The Left like to label him a dinosaur, but they should look in the mirror. Gove is ahead of the game. Most of the education system, and almost all educational psychologists, are ten yards behind the ball.

Maths - is long division easier than short? HMI, and how French lined paper helps with working figures.

HMI's recent paper on good practice in primary maths is less positive about division than about other aspects of maths. Long division is particularly controversial, and the leading textbook for primary teachers, Mathematics Explained for Primary Teachers, specifically and deliberately refuses to discuss the topic at all. There are something like twenty copies of this book in Cambridge University's education library. 

Division amounts to five steps:

• estimate the number of times the divisor will go into the dividend, beginning at the left, and continuing until it will go at least once 
• enter this estimate in the answer area
• multiply the estimate by the divisor
• subtract from the dividend
• move to or bring down the next figure

The process requires fast accurate knowledge of tables, accurate subtraction and good co-ordination so that you don't lose your place. HMI list short and long division. In short division, pupils hold everything in their head, except for figures they carry over to the new number. In long division, everything is written out.

The paradox is that long division can be easier than short. As everything is written down, pupils have less to hold in their head, and can therefore concentrate on doing one thing at a time and not losing their place.  The pupil whose earlier work is described in this link has just got right his first long division calculation dividing a three-digit number by a two-digit number, to two places of decimals. 

He could not have done this without the guidance provided by French lined paper. It has fairly large squares, with three narrow, feint horizontal lines within each square. These allow working figures to be inserted that are clear enough to read, but small enough not to cause confusion with the main figures of the calculation. So "carrying" becomes much more manageable.

HMI note in their favourable report on maths in Finland, here, that pupils' books often include squares.The Finnish squares hold only a single digit.  Download Finnish squares. The French paper's capacity to include working figures is a key advantage. Children for whom calculation is not straightforward often have less neat and well formed handwriting and figures. A little extra space, combined with the extra guidance of the feint lines, can be a great help.

PS - a senior mathematician has gently corrected my earlier use of the term "sum" in relation to division rather than addition. I accept that Macavity, The Mystery Cat, who was to be found doing complicated long division sums, is not good authority for mathematical terminology...

Oh to be in Blackpool...

Three cheers for Blackpool council, putting education before ignorance and investing in libraries, which people need more than ever - both for education and to look for work. Ignorance elsewhere is still having too much its own way. 

Guardian on "challenging behaviour".

At long last, a Guardian writer in this piece on a Pru admits that the term "challenging behaviour" is a euphemism for poor behaviour, consisting mostly of foul-mouthed abuse, low level violence and destruction. "I've been spat at, bitten, kicked. It's part of the job,"  the head says. "I feel privileged to work with these kids."  This is not privilege - it's licensed abuse, and as unhealthy for the perpetrators as for their victims.

Chris Harte solo grammar for sixth forms

Interesting post, here, from Chris Harte on using hexagonal cards to demonstrate grammatical structures at AS and A level.  The hexagonal card's versatility in allowing changes of direction and alternatives to be inserted while retaining clear links to the original structure is praised in comments from readers who have applied the idea to other subjects, including geography, and I can see its use in teaching English grammar at KS2. Some blank templates for making cards are here . I'm looking for any source of ready made blanks. The original post using hexagonal cards to explore ideas in geography, from Damian Clark,  is here.  A link to Pam Hook's piece from NZ, which is very good on having pupils organise their thinking, is here. Thanks, Chris.

Michael Gove on adoption - the piece of his life.

Michael Gove, here, on the experience of being in care and being adopted, has written, literally, the piece of his life. What he says is true, and the tragedy is that the lives of children and potential parents continue to be blighted by people who impose their own view of society on others in a brutal and ignorant power play. But then, ignorance is what these people deal in, usually in the name of equality.  

When my research for the Who Cares? Trust was published in 1995, it was criticised on the grounds that achievement was not an appropriate concept for children in care. I remain outraged at this ignorant, arrogant, anti-social attitude, which is, alas, still prevalent in the left, who see achievement as a middle-class preoccupation rather than as the goal of life and the basis of civilisation. Unfortunately, they are still in power in too many places, not least, if Michael Gove is right, our anti-social and left-leaning judiciary.

 

Place Value - or losing your place? French-ruled paper can help.

Since decimalisation, place value to two places of decimals has become easy. Everyone knows that 1p is not much or 10p either these days, though it is of course better than 1p, which you might not bother to pick up. A pound has become the unit, and everyone knows that £10 is a lot and £100 a great amount. So, we work to two decimal places all the time, and HMI have quite rightly commended money as a way of teaching place value. Children understand it.

But move from this to putting figures on paper, and we have a different problem. The range of problems that children have as they do this, and the errors they make, encompass virtually any way you can think of to get something wrong . I have personal experience of this. In my  Year 7 arithmetic exam, I interpreted my father's advice that it was more important to show your working than to get the right answer, by carefully and neatly writing out every single sum and then not actually doing any of them. It took a concerned visit from a parent to persuade the school that I really could add up. They, alas, then took that too literally by putting me in a top set, doing work I could not understand (in geometry. I  understood it in my thirties).  This propensity to get things wrong has, my piano teacher tells me, been very valuable to me as a teacher, as it enables me to understand my pupils' problems. The poor man has to think of something positive to say. My wife sympathises with him.

Well, I've hit on the idea that the sums involved in arithmetic to two places of decimals are not that difficult, provided children know their tables, and so I spend a great deal of time teaching these and practising them. But then the problem seems not so much to be in the maths, which are often based on single digits, but in losing track of the sum, losing your place, leaving out a step, forgetting to put in a 0, etc.  Pupil in Y8 (with statement for dyslexia, in my view unjustifiably) is prone to these errors, and I've developed for him a series of steps for division which I've posted below and which he finds helpful

French ruled paper (a sample here) helps him to keep on track better than anything else. The main squares are big, so his largeish figures don't throw him out of track with columns, and the series of steps and improving tables mean that he is beginning to handle division by a single digit to two places of decimals  accurately. Rounding up was a problem though. P understood that you rounded up the second digit, or left it untouched. He did not, though, delete the third placed digit. Another small step, quite a lot of practice, and he'd got it by the end of our session. Maybe doing things like that myself helped me to understand how other people do them, and to adapt the explanation accordingly. 

French ruled paper is equally useful for helping people with weak handwriting - the feint narrow lines between the main squares are very good for establishing consistent size in the body of letters.

 

 

Joe Dale's blog - congratulations on 400,000 hits.

A weblog is in some ways a strange form of publishing, combining the immediacy of a private diary with the publicity of a broadcast. Joe Dale's is the daddy of them all in UK languages teaching, and this milestone shows just how much influence he has achieved in the world - literally the world - of languages. Joe now flies all over the world to present his work on ICT and languages, and remains one of the most approachable and generous people in the field, particularly with advice on using technology. Well done, Joe, and here's to the million.