The Education Continuum

New edition of Getting the Buggers to Write out tomorrow!

The third edition of this bestselling book by education superstar, Sue Cowley, includes new material on writing in the Digital Age, creative ideas for getting boys to write and cross-curricular writing projects. There is also a brand new companion website, where you’ll find lots of useful extras, including advice about the teacher as writer – how you can use your writing skills beyond the school.

Sue also has a website dedicated to celebrating writing and the joy it brings to all. Sue is currently holding a writing competition, but entry closes soon. Why not have a go at entering it and you could win a copy of the new book! Check it out here.

 

Melanie Wilson
Commissioning Editor (Professional Education)

A Lesson in Literacy

Staff and pupils at Chenderit School in Northamptonshire were delighted and humbled to be awarded the TES Outstanding Literacy Initiative Award for 2011 having been a finalist last year. This tops a stellar year in which OFSTED recognised the school as Outstanding. Headteacher and author of Learning to Lead - Using Leadership Skills to Motivate Students Graham Tyrer said, ‘It gives us pause to reflect on where next for literacy in our national system. So, here are a few thoughts:

Literacy is at the heart of all things: it launches spacecraft, it allows us to start and solve wars, and it brings to life and enriches emotions and relationships; with it we can nuance and make sense of who we are and who we might become. The more complex and fine the craft of our words become, the more likely it is that we can live in a world championing justice, fairness and peace.

So, as the Department for Education in the UK makes plans for the new curriculum, here is my wish list:

Dear Mr Gove, Please make sure that we have schools where talk and listening develop skills of interdependence, debate and innovation. Young people are alive with invention and compassion and energy. Their talk is vibrant, assertive and often expresses their confusion with their endlessly complex lives. So be ambitious for them. Expect them to be able to talk poetry, science and justice. Be rightly wary of the sterility of functionality.

Help every teacher to believe in themselves as a teacher of words. Every aspect of every source of knowledge is crafted in language. I hope all classrooms celebrate, take risks and invent new ways of speaking, listening and writing. Words are so precious, vulnerable and robust. We must help all teachers to lead language learning with their students. Language doesn't stop at the door of the English classroom, it must be treasured and exemplified and experimented with in every part of the school and given as much status as so called subject content, most of which – if we are honest – will be ossified within a year or two.

If there must be assessment, keep it simple. Prioritise accuracy and flair in equal measure. An individual’s background is irrelevant; young people, their families and the people that make up the schools they attend are capable of the most astonishing insights and sensitivities. And to do that, no child should be left to drift through the system without being able to enjoy and feel confident that they have achieved core basic standards.

And have our students become expert in the discourses of learning. Have our students able to talk about, debate and invent new ways of becoming exceptional electricians, poets, plumbers, space explorers and medics. We become adept at skills when we learn how to learn, when we enjoy learning, when we feel ourselves leaders and inventors of learning.

Help us to open students' minds to texts they may never have heard of. Give us the freedom to choose texts that excite the children we teach and not drag them through a programme of medicinal reading. Let students see why some writers have gained status and others have not. Give them the choice as to what they want to use to make change and to be the poets, and innovators of tomorrow. Of course, they should not be allowed to journey past writing of the most extraordinary influence and beauty: but force march them and they will resent the very names of Shakespeare, Keats, Hardy, Pullman and Morpurgo.

Make the acquisition of skills personal, not linked to age. Allow students to accelerate through the craft of reading and writing and speaking at a pace that excites and liberates them. If language is important, expand the time they study, invent, refine and grow their linguistic skills. For at least an hour each day, students should be learning and inventing their language in secondary schools.

We want our young people to be whoever they want to be. Only if they are excited and skilled in the art of language will they be able to invent with others a future they deserve. So, describe rather than prescribe. Don't prevent invention: the language of innovation is the language of freedom.'

This guest post was written by Graham Tyrer, Headteacher of Chenderit School and author of Learning to Lead.

Melanie Wilson Commissioning Editor (Professional Education)

Great reviews of recently published English texts

Looking for some inspiration for your English classroom in September?  Reworking your reading list for your English PGCE course?  Check out two books recently praised in NATE journals:

Testing English

Reviewed in NATE: ‘Marshall is extremely well qualified to take this subject on – she is arguably the UK’s foremost expert in English and Assessment… It’s a well-written and compelling book that draws on a great range of academic literature and a career rich in assessment research…a must-read.’

 

Secondary English

Reviewed in NATE: ‘Even after ten years of national strategies, this book offers much to guide new entrants to English teaching through some longer-lived traditions of its thinking and practice.’



Alison Baker
Senior Commissioning Editor (Academic Education)

Born to Learn

A source of constant frustration for many teachers, are the reams of guidelines, inspection criteria and advice which lapse into lengthy, indecipherable discourse. Information is more available now than in has ever been – the latest research is disseminated within minutes via online newspapers and comment is free. How are we to devise and implement an effective model for education amidst so many conflicting findings and views?

This was the question on John Abbott’s mind when looking back over 20 years worth of research from the 21st Century Learning Initiative into the relationship between format schooling and informal learning outside of the school gates. The answer has come in the form of a series of short, thought-provoking animations, narrated by British actor Damian Lewis and aimed, quite simply, at getting straight to the point on educational issues.

For John Abbott, the “crisis” of education has not arisen simply from bad teaching, but from the failure of the wider community to engage and nurture the imaginations of young people. It is rather more a crisis of society’s committment to young people and their individual idiosyncracies and spiritual needs. The result is an education system in desperate need of finding ways to ensure creative energy is nurtured, and young people come out with confidence, a forward-thinking attitude and the ability to think outside the box and adapt to an ever-changing world in which following in the footsteps of your parents and teachers might just leave you floundering.

But John Abbott needs little help in stating his claim. Born to Learn - http://www.born-to-learn.org/ - takes the theories behind Abbott’s best-selling book Overschooled but Undereducated: How the crisis in education is jeopardizing our adolescents, and turns them into short and accessible nuggets of thought. No legislative provision, he argues, which is not fully understood by the people, will ever effectively reform an outdated system. The animations are aimed at summing up years of research and turning them into a Call to Action – a creative solution for unlocking the creative potential of future generations.

Rosie Pattinson

Editorial Assistant