John Bald/language and literacy

Outstanding progress in writing and speaking.

After the Wellington Festival, we returned to work on Tuesday morning with a session that I found pure delight. The pupils had worked on the errors in their drafts and practised their pronunciation really hard, and we started by having them read back their own writing.

Here are pupil A's first and second pieces of writing, both completed in five minutes with no prompts or backup of any kind. The goal in the first piece was to practise the French technique of using silent letters at the ends of words to indicate meaning without breaking flow. We also practised the technique of dropping the vowel from a short companion word to avoid a glottal stop. The examples of this are highlighted in blue.  

l'homme, la femme, le garçon, la fille, bonjour, salut, merci, nous sommes calmes, nous sommes riches, j'aime, j'adore, j'aime les chiens, j'adore notre chat, j'ai, tu as, il a, elle a, nous avons, vous avez, ils ont, elles ont, s'il vous plaît, noir, rose, blanc.

In the second piece, pupil A moved to sentences and wrote this:

Je m'appelle SM. J’ai onze ans et je suis née le neuf septembre 2003. Mes parents s'appellent K  et J M.. J'ai deux soeurs qui s'appellent Olivia et Gloria et un frère qui s'appelle Michael. Gloria travaille actuellement à Londres pour Amnesty International.  Michael vit a Singapour et travaille en tant que journaliste pour un journal d'entreprise. Nous avons deux collies, Manchee et Bella, qui ont dix mois. Nous les avons depuis huit mois et ils sont vraiment mignons.

Ma meilleure amie est Gemma Ramsay, qui habite à trois portes de chez nous. Nous aimons être ensemble  et jouer avec les chiens. Hier, nous sommes allées au cinema voir Pitch Perfect 2, un film au sujet d'un groupe de chant a capella.

Pupil A had practised reading this with her mother, and read it back with beautiful French pronunciation and only one or two small errors. For someone who had been learning French for six months it was a remarkable performance. Discussing it, I suggested that the French would be more likely to say "il est journaliste," which is more direct, and a matter of usage rather than grammar.

Pupil B is a year older, but her first piece was similar in scope to pupil A's. Note that in both pieces I had taught the purposes of accents in French very carefully, so that the pupils understood what they were doing and why.

bonjour, bonsoir, salut, au revoir, à plus tard, bientôt, bienvenu, oui, non, merci beaucoup, aller, être, Comment allez-vous?  avez vous,   Quel âge as-tu?  j'habite,   Quelle heure  est-il,  je vous en prie,  je ne comprends pas, pourvoir, parce que, j'aime mon joli chapeau.

Pupil B's second piece took her a little more than five minutes to write, and was truly astonishing for a twelve year-old who had been learning French for six months.

Je m’appelle OM. J’ai douze ans. Je suis née à Harrogate dans le Nord de l'Angleterre, mais je vis à Falkirk en Écosse depuis six ans. Je vis avec ma soeur, ma mère, mon père et deux chiens, Bella et Manchee. Je suis éduquée à domicile par mes parents. J'aimerais pouvoir explorer les sujets en plus de détail et j'ai découvert de nouveaux sujets, tels que le cinéma et l'histoire de l'art. J'aime particulièrement les films d'Alfred Hitchcock, surtout North by North-West  parce qu'il est plein de suspense. J'aimerais aller à l'université pour étudier la criminologie et de la psychologie, la médecine peut-être. Mes parents s'appellent J  et K . Mon père est un inventeur et ingénieur spécialisé dans les technologies de l'énergie renouvelable et maman aide papa avec l'entreprise.

Elle a fait des études à l'Université de Manchester et a obtenu un baccalauréat spécialisé avec distinction en anthropologie sociale. J'ai un frère qui s'appelle Michael, qui vit à Singapour. Il a un baccalauréat spécialisé avec distinction en journalisme et écrit pour un journal dans la section Affaires. J'ai aussi deux sœurs   qui s'appellent Sophie et Gloria. Gloria possède une maîtrise en droit des droits de l'homme et travaille pour Amnesty International en tant que spécialiste du Moyen-Orient. Sophie est ma soeur cadette. Elle a 11 ans et fait ses études à domicile avec moi. Elle aimerait aller à l'université pour étudier le design d'intérieur.

Mon cousin Steven est  berger sur une ferme à Dumfries. Les nouveaux agneaux viennent de naître. Nous aimons passer un séjour sur sa ferme et monter sur le quad, mais c'est un peu dangereux!

Pupil B's reading was good, but less fluent than pupil A's, partly because what she had set out to say was much more complex. "Soeur" caused some problems that we did not quite fix during the lesson, but we'll see again next week.

This work is an example of mastery technique in teaching and learning, and mirrors the success of this approach in the government's initiative in mathematics. Learning involves the development of new neural networks that are reinforced by practice. Overloading them, or going too quickly, inhibits or prevents their development. Matching teaching and learning to individual children's needs promotes growth. The common practice in language teaching of ignoring errors, rather than using them as an indication of what needs to be taught, is the opposite of mastery learning, and a catastrophic error.

Inspection Companies - why they should not be tarred with the same brush.

Ofsted is highly skilled at blaming the people who work for it for its own shortcomings. Over the years, I worked for a very wide range of companies, including Essex, a local authority with which I'd previously fallen out, Nord Anglia, Tribal, Serco and a smaller company, Penzer Allen. I did most of my work with the last two, and found them highly professional and impartial at all times.

Penzer Allen had a strong personal touch, with excellent administrative staff and managers, some of whom have become friends. They had a rule that an inspector who made a mistake would be supported in putting it right, but would not be hired again if they tried to cover it up. Everyone knew the partners, and successful inspectors would be involved in decision making, training, and representing the company at meetings with Ofsted. It was, nevertheless, rigorous rather than cosy - this was made possible by a shared commitment to rigour and fairness.

SERCO was a larger organisation whose training days might attract 50 or so inspectors. The education side of the company operated independently of its other activities, and should not share in the criticism that has been rightly made of them.  It put together well-qualified teams, with particularly strong lead inspectors, and had at its core two highly experienced and incisive leaders who read reports with a critical but fair eye, picking out any conflicts of evidence and ensuring that they lead inspector resolved them properly. Both of these leaders could easily have been senior HMI, and they worked to the same standard. Once again, it was a pleasure to work in such an atmosphere. Intellect was respected and the work was done properly.

The local authority, for which I read reports, worked to the same standard. I was surprised to work with them after my criticism of their performance in teaching reading, but this work was properly carried out.

I've published on this site a letter sent by Tribal to its inspectors, which pretty well sums up that company's approach, and will leave readers to decide whether this is an organisation they would like to work with. I think it's well named.

All I'll say here is that all inspection companies were not alike, and that they did not deserve the same fate. 

The key turns.

Barry read in his school assembly this week, and we moved to reading some words that required more than blending the sounds of individual letters. He did not know what the alphabet was, but when I started writing it down, could recite the letter names in sequence. He did not, though, know which letters were associated with the names, thinking, for example, that i represented the name of the letter e. This was one for practice. I explained the effect of i or e on c, as he was interested in science and wanted to become a scientist. I explained then the need to use all of the information contained in letters, to see the difference between science and scientist. We worked on other two-syllable words that occurred in conversation - eg pencil and radio, after which I introduced, as a very difficult word, ratio. We moved to the word information, which Barry could read after I worked on it with him, and read his previous words cranium and stadium, both of which required prompts at first, though he later added crane. Barry's spoken language showed marked improvement, from his more formal greeting of "Good morning, Mr John", to his improved use of sentences in communication. The lesson lasted 30 minutes, and Barry concentrated well throughout. 

As always I noted every word or item we worked on, and here is today's note:

Wellington Festival of Education, notes and presentations. John Stein dyslexia, John Bald, French to Falkirk.

Wellington Festival of Education 2015 was a great success for Sir Anthony Seldon, and remains the only educational event that is genuinely open to all for a reasonable subscription. Highlights included an excellent double act between Tony Little, head of Eton, and Eton's head of administration and technology, Percy Harrison - Eton can give a joke as well as take one - and Professor John Stein's excellent presentation of new evidence of brain development and dyslexia. Professor Stein's evidence of irregular development and distribution of large and small cells in the receptive areas for vision and sound, of genetic elements, and of of the influence of Omega 3 oils brings us close to a definitive picture of the condition, though of course none of these techniques are available in the normal course of assessment, which remains vulnerable to the factors identified by Professor Joe Elliot of Durham.  Download 10.00 - John Stein

My presentation on French to Falkirk is here.  Download French to Falkirk, Wellington 2015  The slides of writing are remarkable for pupils who have been learning for under six months, and pupil B has studied a further twenty pages of Le Petit Prince, looking for shared words, since last week.

 

Ofsted's machine-gunner. Updated.

 

Sir Robin Bosher, Ofsted's machine-gunner

Sir Robin Bosher has not been a member of Her Majesty's Inspectorate, and has little inspection experience. In fact, I don't know if he has any inspection experience at all. After refusing to renew contracts for 1200 inspectors in one day, he was interviewed by Eddie  Mair on Radio 4 (pm, 19th June). He gave the most disgraceful display of stonewalling since James Callaghan over the European referendum in the seventies, refusing to answer questions and smirking when Mair asked him what mark he'd give a schoolchild who didn't answer the question. Exercising power gives some people great satisfaction.  

A few more questions need to be answered, or not, as is more likely. This section has been updated following information supplied by inspectors.

How did Sir Robin carry out these "assessments"? Did he read reports or just sift CVs and throw out those he didn't like? A comment was made about "leadership experience". Does this mean that all inspectors must be former heads?  If so, that will further weaken Ofsted's very limited capacity to inspect subjects. He happens to have sacked the only inspector accredited to inspect one subject, not that I think he cared or noticed.  Update. It is clear that very, very few inspectors who had not been headteachers were allowed to proceed past the application stage, and that most of those rejected did not have their work fairly assessed.  For those who survived, Ofsted carried out an assessment procedure very similar in format to the way that Ofsted training has always worked - eg, inspectors would be given a body of evidence from a mock inspection, and asked to write a report.  However, my information, from an inspector who survived the process, shows that the main form of selection was a paper sift.   

As reports have to be approved by Ofsted, how could he tell, having been with Ofsted under a year, what was the work of individual inspectors and what alterations had been made by Ofsted or contractors centrally? Once again, did he care?  It appears from my information that he could not, and did not attempt to do so. Ofsted did not look beyond the cv in many cases.

Previous changes to the Ofsted framework have required some retraining of inspectors. Why did this one require wholesale execution?  There was a move towards a smaller number of full-time inspectors. This would have required some redundancies, but should not have been presented as raising the bar.

And finally, after a conversation with an inspector "kicked out" - in the inspector's words - after twenty years whose work on teams I led was consistently excellent and so assessed by Her Majesty's Inspectors - which Sir Robin Bosher is not - I'd like to ask him whether he has any sense of justice at all, or merely likes lining people up for his administrative machine gun. Were the inspectors inadequate, or is Sir Robin Bosher? This inspector was in no doubt - "Definitely a hatchet job," they said. "They're not interested in whether a person is a good inspector or not."  Update. This remains true, and a disgrace. Sir Robin was not really in a position to judge what made a good inspector, on the basis of his own limited experience. I would still like to know if he has personally inspected so much as a bus ticket.

The KGB would be proud of Sir Robin, if not jealous - there is no appeal from 9mm. Except that here, with 1200 in a day, some more substantial weaponry was needed and supplied. Sir Robin certainly deserves an honour for his work, but it should have been the Order of Lenin rather than a knighthood.

In case I sound like an injured party, I'll make it clear that I'm not personally affected by the carnage, having carried out my last Ofsted inspection in 2006, though I'm still involved in school evaluation and support in other contexts. I have a file of positive evaluation letters from HMI, and was followed, without being told about it, into an inspection by a TES reporter in 2004, who wrote this about my personal contribution to the inspection:

But they don't blame the lead inspector. "The Regi told us on his pre-inspection visit that he would never pass by a strength without noting it, and that he would always set weaknesses in their context. I think he was true to his word," says David Smart. "He kept in touch with me several times a day, and went out of his way to pass on praise for colleagues who had been rated good, very good or excellent in their lesson observations.

He was willing to engage with students, too. He let my A-level sociology class question him very sharply about the Ofsted regime; he took it all on the chin, and was complimentary about their performance."

Head of RE Moira Middleton was also impressed. "The inspector smiled a lot," she says. "He was very positive and nice; genuinely interested in our work, supportive, sensitive and unobtrusive. He made us feel he was on our side." RE teacher Beth Hayward agrees. "He came into my first lesson. I was desperately nervous, and started it with some really terrible jokes. But he laughed at them, and put me more at ease."

I wrote my share of critical reports too, and had to endure the cycle of abuse and complaints that sometimes, though not always, followed them.  It would not be fair to include a negative report here, as the schools have now moved on, but here is a positive report, used as evidence for a successful entry to the Evening Standard School of the Year Award in 2006:

Download Gateway ofsted

Oh, and the answer to Eddie Mair's question about how long this has been going on?  I don't believe that the inspectors are inadequate at all, though some are better than others. The system was wrecked in 2005 by the move from first hand observation to reliance on dodgy data - see Dispatches, 15th June - and by a centralisation of power that removed the independence of lead inspectors. The author of the disaster was Sir David Bell, and the system has not yet recovered. Ofsted, and not the inspectors, is the cause of the problem.

Ofsted urgently needs to set up an appeals process, staffed by experienced HMI who know what they are doing, and not by someone whose successful experience lies in another area of education. Serving inspectors should have had their work assessed properly. Brutality and ignorance in a school inspection system are not good enough.

 

This posting draws on evidence from two serving inspectors. Any others with something to add, please get in touch. Confidentiality guaranteed.

Further update, 27th July 2015.  The form of words used to communicate the end of inspectors' careers was as follows, via email.  You do not meet requirements. There is no appeal. 

Ofsted once had a principle of inspection, set out in its Handbook, that people should be left feeling they had been treated well and fairly.  Sir Robin Bosher's idea of good and fair treatment is a kick in the face.

Patrick Hemmerle, piano concerts.

Patrick Hemmerle, currently living in Cambridge, is one of the finest classical pianists in the world, and one of the easiest to get to hear. His current concert programme is here, and there are plenty of examples of his work on Youtube. If you are interested in classical piano playing of the highest order, Patrick's presence in the UK provides a wonderful opportunity to hear it.

The key and how to turn it, 4. Brief progress report, b and d.

When we started, Barry was regularly confusing b and d, and his mother and the school were worried about this, as it is often seen as a sign of "dyslexia".   Observation showed that this error tended only to happen at the start of a word, and not when the letter appeared in the middle or the end. My approach, when he made a mistake, was to move to another word with a b or d at the beginning, teach that, and return to the word that had caused the problem. I didn't tell Barry he'd got it wrong, but, again borrowing the idea from Sue Buckley's work with Down syndrome, simply indicated that he needed to think again. I didn't put b and d words together and ask him to discriminate between them, but praised him every time he got one right, and worked in the way just described when he made a mistake.

Barry couldn't make this week's lesson as he had a bad cold. However, his mother remarked when she phoned me that his school had noticed an improvement in reading words beginning with b and d. This progress is, I think, consistent with the evidence below on worked examples.

The Key and How to Turn It, 3d posting. Lesson 5.

Lesson 4, below, involved slow progress, with my attention focused on having Barry pay more attention to the information from letters as he read. This lesson, with both parents present, began very strongly indeed. Barry read the ditty he'd had to work hard on last time - it contained drip and drop in various permuations - quickly and confidently, with only one slight hesitation on another word. His discrimination between the two voice (vowel) sounds was secure, and this fully justified the time we had taken over it in the last lesson. Barry's mother said he'd been practising. A heap of praise ensued, and Barry asked if he could read the ditty again. He did, and even better this time.

The longer words, cranium and stadium, had not stuck, so we discussed them again, and the reasons for choosing cranium (Barry's interest in the skeleton). We discussed the word, and stadium. We then worked on four more ditties, which involved combinations of letters, ng, and clusters of consonants. Barry had to work on each new combination carefully, with the usual technique of reinforcing each one with other words with the same pattern of letters and sounds at the end. Words we had to work on, or on which Barry hesitated, included long, hunt, and grin. Barry did not know what a grin was, so we discussed different types of smile. The final word in this session was pasta.

More good news, though, was that Barry was talking a lot more, both to his parents and to me. He was still talking as he left and got into the car, and with better annunciation, for example in discussing whether he wanted a hamster or a dog for a pet. Building up his knowledge of letter patterns, in a way similar to the use of worked examples in geometry below, is giving him the confidence that comes from getting things right. All four of us were very happy with the outcome.

 

 

"I'm quite excited for them!" Notes from a teaching assistant on first trying my approach to teaching struggling readers. Updated.

My work with struggling readers helps them to use the information contained in letters, particularly but not only the phonic information, by reinforcing each word they find difficult through further, similar examples. I found Professor Usha Goswami's discovery, in the early nineties, that pupils find it easier to note similar patterns at the ends of words rather than the beginning, extremely helpful, and the effect seems similar to that of the worked examples in geometry in the posting below. 

A teaching assistant took up my offer of free advice last week, and sent me this, two working days later:

 

Hello John,

Thank you for your time on Friday. I've run your ideas past the head and deputy and they are very happy for me to adapt ......... (existing scheme) to whatever I think will work, rather than feeling I need to stick exactly to the prescribed course.

I had my first trial run today. I've been thrilled to discover lots about how these very individual children read that I didn't know before and to slow down the reading so there is time to look properly at words they don't know.

All of them can 'get' an unknown word through looking at known words, although I sometimes had to go backwards eg but/butter/flutter. I'm lucky enough to have an i-pad at work - so we could look at pictures of muesli, pliers and people fencing and the etymology of the word 'electricity'.

They only have 15 minutes twice a week with me, but it is surprising what we packed in. They worked very hard and seemed to enjoy this new style of learning. Sometimes just writing the unknown word on a card was was enough. I'm ordering your book and some blank cards too.

It feels much more comfortable to me, as it is tutoring rather than literacy intervention. So thanks again for your help and your website. I'm quite excited for them!


Best wishes,

 

Update - after a week.

It was good. The children had remembered an impressive amount of what
we covered in their previous session. Only two (out of the dozen or so
that I have) had enormous trouble in blending adjacent letters together,
often inserting letters that aren't there in the word at all or taking
letters from the end of a word and inserting them at the beginning. For
those two I'm going to go very slowly.

  There are such surprising gaps in their knowledge. One was perfectly
happy with 'although' but couldn't do anything with 'spoil' and had to
be taught 'oil'. So I think I'm giving them the rest of the pieces to
the jigsaw. I'm really enjoying the fact that I can tailor each session
so precisely to each child. I can't wait for your book to come. I'm not
trained in phonics and have learnt lots this week. I have noticed that
some of the words they have trouble with are French - 'saucer' and
'voyage' or difficult - 'aught' endings have come up a few times.
Fifteen minutes is just about enough time for each session.