Is the national school system creating a generation of children who are unable to speak properly?
Mary Bousted, the general secretary to the Association of Teacher and lecturers, has delivered a scathing attack, believing ‘that under the governments literacy plan, pupils no longer read whole books or write in class for pleasure, but instead analyse “extracts” for tests’. The great works of Shakespeare are no longer being enjoyed in their entirety but instead pupils are revising sections of extracted scenes. Dr Bousted who was an English teacher said:”My subject, English is no more. It has been replaced by a newcomer- Literacy”.
Has Literacy paved the way for the end of reading?
There is also a great worry that poetry is becoming a dying subject, with the Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen criticising the Government for failing to promote reading for fun. Is English as a subject really on the verge of extinction? Have your say!
Shocking article from the BBC in ‘07 ’stressed teachers ‘taking drugs”, telling the harrowing stories of teacher overwhelmed by Ofsted inspections, increased classroom monitoring by managers and the excessive work of being a teacher in the UK education sector.
2 years on and since leaving my teaching post in an inner London school, I find that this is still the case, with many of my former colleagues turning to unconventional methods to help ease the pressures of being an educator. Every conversation I have with them involves the uphill struggle in the education system, a system that does not relent on providing a repetitive administrative cycle.
Here at StudentRM we are focused on easing the pressures teachers face on a daily basis, our software solutions cuts admin time, help teachers to keep organised and allows them to focus their attention back to the reason they joined this wonderful profession of teaching…the children.
An article from the Guardian dated July’08, ‘Make the grades or you’re grounded‘. Discusses how in the US parents are able to view certain aspects of school reporting on their own children, such as grades and attendance.
Ministers in the UK are keen to increase communication between school and home by such “real time” reporting. They say the termly parents’ evening and report are no longer enough to keep parents engaged or informed about their child’s progress. The government wants all secondary schools to have these systems by 2010, and all primary schools by 2012. “Real-time reporting means parents will be able to access updated information on children’s achievement, progress, attendance, behaviour and special needs, whenever they want - using secure online systems,” said the schools minister, Jim Knight.
Controversy has broken out with the National Union of Teachers relaying concerns about the possible extra work involved in logging on to input data on their students weekly or even daily. “Until a proper, independently evaluated pilot happens, Mr Knight cannot claim that there will be no increase in workload,” says the National Union of Teachers.
Well thankfully teachers have StudentRM, all teacher reporting is in real-time, with the option for teachers to make any information posted on the platform available to parents through the secure ‘parents dashboard’. It’s not a matter of having to add more information, the information already exists on the platform, its just simply selecting which information you want parents to see on their child, saving time and allowing you to get back to teaching. We’ll be posting a lot more on this in the future so stay tuned…
Today, I want to talk about the Cases feature and the problems it solves for many different stakeholders at school. For example let’s take a typical scanerio we have when it comes to mentors.
Mentors whether it is at KS2, KS3 or KS4 play a vital role in supporting the students they closlely work with - What I have found from experiance and by speaking to mentors is similar across the board. Much of the work they do stays between them and the student. This is because it is often difficult or there are no systems in place to share the good work that is done with other people who have an interest in the students education. What also seems to be common is a lot of the time mentors end up building great relationships, discovering brilliant strategies that work however because of the lack of system or method of storing and sharing this valuable information means it is often hidden.
A typical scanerio in school:
Mr Brown is currently mentoring Thomas Jones in Year 10 and supporting him with all his subjects as he is below target in all of his subjects. One of the first things Mr Brown decides to do is get some feedback from all his teachers. He does this by sending an email to all the staff. Staff often get annoyed by this because this tends to clog up the inboxes of teachers who do not teach Thomas. Once Mr Brown gathers this information he puts it into this personal folder and begins his day making notes, comments and gathering worksheets, assignments from different subjects during his day working with Thomas. By the close of play he has many different notes, valuable information and has an idea of Thomas’s behaviour, effort and attitude across the subjects. Mr Brown during the day spends a few minutes to reflect with Thomas and give him praise in between lessons. At this stage many of the teachers that teach Thomas are not aware of the information Mr Brown has discovered. At some point Mr Brown types all the information up and puts it in his file and then takes more time to email all the relevant teachers with an update. This is incredibly time consuming and Mr Brown often finds it difficult to keep everything together and share valuable information he has discovered with Thomas’s tutor or subject teachers. Mr Brown decides to take the easier option and put all the information he has typed up in the Year 10 Mentoring folder on the shared area and email the link to all the members of staff.
Huge amount of time, effort and energy
In reflection I am sure Mr Brown is spending far more time searching for information, sharing information, analysing information and storing it, rather then spending time supporting and mentoring Thomas. At StudentRM our mission from the outset has been to provide solutions for these types of typical problems we have in school day everyday when it comes to sharing information and taking action
Cases for Mentors using StudentRM
The case for Cases and why they will free your time
Since we demonstrated Cases feature to Mr Brown, she has saved masses of time, effort and energy. This how Mr Brown works now:
He searches for Thomas’s name by using the simple search
Mr Brown then creates a case called “Mentoring Thomas Jones - KS4 Support”
StudentRM will notify all the teachers that support Thomas and ask them for feedback. This feedback will automatically be put in a word document for Mr Brown saving him a huge amount of time.
When Mr Brown wants to leave a note, file or comment about Thomas, he simply searches his name and put his feedback on Thomas’s page - keeping all his interactions in once place and shared automatically with everyone that has acces. Mr Brown can also create notes, leave comments and keep them private if he wishes.
Mr Brown will continue to leave his thoughts on the case and once he has finished his mentoring he can close the case - If anyone searches for Thomas in the near future will be able to see a history of all the work Mr Brown has done with Thomas without having to search through emails and shared areas.
I recently read an article in the Telegraph titled ‘Teachers call for a day off for admin‘ where the acting general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, Christine Blower has claimed that the Government reforms introduced to cut bureaucracy and ease workload had failed.
She said teachers were working increasingly long hours - causing many to quit the profession because of stress.
The NUT is calling for a new contract spelling out a series of “teachers’ rights”.
A motion being put to the union’s annual conference next month calls for teachers to have “a minimum 20 per cent non-contact time”, rising to 40 per cent among staff in their first year in the job.
If implemented would these measures ease your life at school and make you enjoy teaching again?
A typical scanerio in school:
Mark Smith is currently not working at his best and his English teacher Mrs Jackson is concerned about his attitude - She decides to take some action and get some thoughts about how he is doing by touching base with his tutor and his subject teachers. This usually takes 30 minutes or so because Mrs Jackson has to find out the tutor name and go
through Mark’s timetable to find out the names of the teachers so she can email them using Outlook. Once Mrs Jackson carries this out after spending atleast 30minutes, she realises she now has several emails cluttering up her inbox with lots of email being forwarded and replied to with very valuable information about Mark. She also discovers that Mark is working really well when he has a support teacher but strangely in English he has not had one for the last term - This only came to light from the emails bouncing around. Mrs Jackson decided to collate all the information she discovered and put it all in one new email which she would send out to all the teachers. Again this is taking up more of her time however she feels it’s important everyone is kept in the loophole because Mark is a very bright lad and needs appropiate support.
Shared Notes StudentRM
Say goodbye to your cluttered inbox and email overload
StudentRM makes it effortless with minimal time to achieve the above. Since Mrs Jackson discovered StudentRM, all she does is find Tony’s name by using the simple search and then briefly write a note about her concerns. StudentRM will work out who to send the note to and make it effortless to keep all the notes, private, shared and comments in one central place for everyone to see. What’s also great is all this valuable information isn’t hidden away in the inboxes of teachers emails - it’s shared and attached to Mark so if another teacher searches for Mark, they can see all the interactions that have taken place and leave thier comments.
Today we are pleased to announce the exciting new Enterprise Technical Partnership between StudentRM and SIMs from Capita. The UK’s leadining MIS provider in the education system with 80% marketshare.
One really good way to begin a lesson is having well planned starter activities. These should be no more than 5-8 minutes long and should allow pupils to start straight away as soon as they enter the room. Let me give you some examples for some of the things I do for starters when I teach.
Riddles - I display a riddle on the board and give the pupils 5 minutes to solve it. The first pupil that solves it gets treated to some chocolates. This kind of activity gets the pupils engaged straight away because they have to solve the problem within a given time frame and there is a reward at the end
Magic Illusions - I also use 3D optical illusions at the start of lessons with a running slide show on the projector. Key Stage 3 Pupils in particular really enjoy this and it really helps set the mood for a good lesson.
Conundrums - Just as you have in the popular game show Countdown, I use anagrams of keywords with a time limit asking the pupils to figure out the jumbled up words. This again works really well and gets pupils thinking and focusing straight away.
The above are just a couple of the things you can do. Remember starter activities do not have to be about the subject you teach. You ideally want a starter activity to allow you to engage the pupils and get them on target and focused with teaching and learning, ready for the main activity in the lesson.
There always seems to be the usual few who seem to cause havoc and disruption every lesson. It’s a shame but in the few schools that I have taught at this is certainly the case. Let me tell you about one Year 7 class. There are 28 pupils and 4 of them are an absolute nightmare in every lesson.
The biggest problem they cause is low level noise disruption. This is affecting the teaching and learning of others and causing other pupils within the class to become frustrated. As you can imagine you have someone who is really keen to learn and someone who wants to do everything apart from learning.
Some strategies that certainly help are to introduce:
Seating Plans
Praise, Praise and more Praise
Sitting at the front / near the teacer
Peer to Peer / Team working
I’d like to ask you, what would you do in this situation? and how would you solve this issue?
We are in the process of organising an exciting new workshop / conference for SENCOs, Heads, G&T Coordinaters and classroom teachers to share strategies on building positive relationships. As yet, the date and the location of the workshop have not been set but you can find out more information attached below. Please leave a comment below and share your feedback with us.
