Transcript Title

New National Primary Curriculum – Challenges and Opportunities Redwood Hotel, Bristol – Thursday 27 February 2014

Outline of the day

9.30

Introduction The new curriculum – compliance or growth?

10.00 Mathematics and literacy across the curriculum 10.45 Coffee 11.15 History workshop 12.30 Lunch 1.15

2.30

Geography workshop Science workshop 3.30 Close

The school curriculum in England Aims

The national curriculum provides pupils with an introduction to the

essential knowledge

that they need to be educated citizens. It introduces pupils to the best that has been thought and said; and helps engender an appreciation of human creativity and achievement.

‘The Government believes that recent changes to the National Curriculum, such as

the inclusion of skills development and the promotion of generic dispositions, have distorted the core function

of the National Curriculum and diluted the importance of subject knowledge.’

• PISA tests students’ ability to apply their learning to think critically, solve problems and make judgements • Japan responded by moving away from a narrow knowledge-based curriculum and to focus more on skills and broader understanding Andrew Schleicher – Division Head OECD i/c PISA

The national curriculum is just one element in the education of every child

. There is time and space in the school day and in each week, term and year to range beyond the national curriculum specifications.

The national curriculum provides an outline of core knowledge around which teachers can develop exciting and stimulating lessons to promote the development of pupils’ knowledge, understanding and skills as part of the wider school curriculum.

Compliance or growth?

IMPLEMENT GROW

Checklists Procedures to follow

Climates of compliance

Responsiveness Principles

Climates of growth

Designing your world class curriculum

Principles not content: • Values, aims and principle • Key competencies for learning and life • The world’s major branches of learning • Community, local, national and global contexts

x – no; P – partially; A – always; O - outstanding

Designing your world class curriculum

Principles not content: • Values, aims and principle • Key competencies for learning and life • The world’s major branches of learning • Community, local, national and global contexts

Curriculum competencies

Seeing learning in terms of

competencies

as well as subjects suggests several principles about curriculum organisation. For example: • The curriculum needs to be more than subjects • Learning needs to involve knowledge, skills and understanding – but also attitudes and values • Pupils will only develop skills with practice • Skills need to be developed in the context of knowledge • To apply skills and knowledge, we need practical situations that have some meaning for the pupils © Curriculum Foundation 11

Knowledge

Curriculum competencies

Skill Attitude Competence Subjects Application of subjects Teaching and learning approach © Curriculum Foundation 12 Competence

Designing your world class curriculum

Principles not content: • Values, aims and principle • Key competencies for learning and life • The world’s major branches of learning • Community, local, national and global contexts

How do the wider aims, values, skills and competencies impact on the subjects?

Development framework

Framework of expectations

Learning expectations need to take account : • Key skills • Personal development • Competencies eg communication, calculation, computer competency • Subject areas Generally set out expectations for each year group or stage of development within these headings. The expectations may vary from year to year with different cohorts, and will be revised in the light of the actual learning that takes place

The key skills

Investigate Analyse and synthesise Develop and create Evaluate Communication

The Subjects

The Subjects

Investigate Analyse and synthesise Develop and create Evaluate Communication

Making a start

Two possible routes: 1. Throw everything out and start again.

2. Take your present plans and ask searching questions

Questions you might ask

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Does our curriculum planning focus on learning needs for all our pupils?

Why have we included this element? Does this piece of learning really need to be here? Is it a NC requirement? Or an element we want to include?

What key skills and competencies are we developing in this piece of work?

Will the experiences really bring about the intended learning?

How long will it take? (does it really need half a term?) Where will it take place?

Who will be involved?

How can we make it even more exciting, challenging and memorable?

Further reading

Year of the Curriculum: www.teachers.org.uk/campaigns/curriculum

Maths and Literacy across the curriculum

School Curriculum

The programmes of study for mathematics are set out year-by-year for key stages 1 and 2.

Schools are, however, only required to teach the relevant programme of study by the end of the key stage

. Within each key stage, schools therefore have the flexibility to introduce content earlier or later than set out in the programme of study. In addition, schools can introduce key stage content during an earlier key stage, if appropriate. All schools are also required to set out their school curriculum for mathematics on a year-by-year basis and make this information available online.

National Curriculum - aims

• become

fluent

in the fundamentals of mathematics, including through varied and frequent practice with increasingly complex problems over time, so that pupils develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately. •

reason mathematically

by following a line of enquiry, conjecturing relationships and generalisations, and developing an argument, justification or proof using mathematical language • can

solve problems

by applying their mathematics to a variety of routine and non-routine problems with increasing sophistication, including breaking down problems into a series of simpler steps and persevering in seeking solutions.

Fluency is more than memorization of procedures and facts.

• an understanding of the meaning of the operations and their relationships to each other -- for example, the inverse relationship between multiplication and division; • the knowledge of a large repertoire of number relationships, including the addition and multiplication "facts" as well as other relationships, such as how 4 X 5 is related to 4 X 50; • a thorough understanding of the base ten number system, how numbers are structured in this system, and how the place value system of numbers behaves in different operations – for example, that 24 + 10 = 34 or 24 X 10 = 240.

‘Being friends with number’ Lynne McClure

National Curriculum - aims

• become

fluent

in the fundamentals of mathematics, including through varied and frequent practice with increasingly complex problems over time, so that pupils develop conceptual understanding and the ability to recall and apply knowledge rapidly and accurately. •

reason mathematically

by following a line of enquiry, conjecturing relationships and generalisations, and developing an argument, justification or proof using mathematical language • can

solve problems

by applying their mathematics to a variety of routine and non-routine problems with increasing sophistication, including breaking down problems into a series of simpler steps and persevering in seeking solutions.

National Curriculum - aims

Mathematics is an interconnected subject in which pupils need to be able to move fluently between representations of mathematical ideas. The programmes of study are, by necessity, organised into apparently distinct domains, but pupils should make rich connections across mathematical ideas to develop fluency, mathematical reasoning and competence in solving increasingly sophisticated problems.

They should also apply their mathematical knowledge to science and other subjects.

Making links

Why do we talk about linking maths and literacy with the rest of the curriculum?

What are we being asked to do in the National Curriculum?

How might we put this into practice in our schools?

National Curriculum - Literacy

• Teachers should develop pupils’ spoken language, reading, writing and vocabulary as integral aspects of the teaching of every subject. English is both a subject in its own right and the medium for teaching; for pupils, understanding the language provides access to the whole curriculum. Fluency in the English language is an essential foundation for success in all subjects. • Pupils’ acquisition and command of vocabulary are key to their learning and progress across the whole curriculum…. It is particularly important to induct pupils into the language which defines each subject in its own right, such as accurate mathematical and scientific language.

National Curriculum - Maths

• • Teachers should use every relevant subject to develop pupils’ mathematical fluency. Confidence in numeracy and other mathematical skills is a precondition of success across the national curriculum. Teachers should develop pupils’ numeracy and mathematical reasoning in all subjects so that they understand and appreciate the importance of mathematics ... They should be taught to apply their mathematics to both routine and non-routine problems, including breaking down more complex problems into a series of simpler steps.

Symbols Language Mathematical image/picture Context

Adapted from Derek Haylock and Anne Cockburn 2003

Approaches to making links

• Teaching concurrently • Directly teach an aspect of literacy/maths in another subject • Using and applying mathematical/literacy skills – planned and incidental • Use of literacy /maths teaching strategies in other curriculum areas • Homework

Multiplicative reasoning

Pupils can explain the relationship between multiplication, division and fractions. They use this understanding to derive facts and solve problems.

I can explain and represent…what happens if you share four bars of chocolate fairly between seven people.

Primary Mathematics Planning Framework Babcock LDP/Rising Stars

Where should the penguin go?

Approaches to making links

• Teaching concurrently • Directly teach an aspect of literacy/maths in another subject • Using and applying mathematical/literacy skills – planned and incidental • Use of literacy /maths teaching strategies in other curriculum areas • Homework

Additive Reasoning

Pupils can solve addition and subtraction problems in different contexts, appropriately choosing and using number facts, understanding of place value and counting and mental and written methods. They explain their decision making and justify their solutions.

I can use information from graphs to explain how the population has changed in size at different points in time.

Primary Mathematics Planning Framework Babcock LDP/Rising Stars

Breeding pairs on islands in the Western Cape

Approaches to making links

• Teaching concurrently • Directly teach an aspect of literacy/maths in another subject • Using and applying mathematical/literacy skills – planned and incidental • Use of literacy /maths teaching strategies in other curriculum areas • Homework

Southern Rockhopper

Length: 450 – 580mm Weight: 2000 – 3400g Pairs globally: 1 000 000 Age record: 29 years Breeding area: Islands off Argentina and Chile Dive depth: 28.9m

Incubation: 32 – 34 days

Classic problems to solve

A rockhopper penguin is at the bottom of a cliff which is 20m high. Every five minutes the penguin jumps up ¾ m then is washed back down the cliff ¼ m by a wave. How long does it take for the penguin to reach the top of the cliff? Show how you reached your solution.

Classic problems to solve

There are two adult rockhoppers and two young rockhoppers sitting on rocks down a cliff with a rock between them. Rockhoppers can hop onto adjacent rocks above or below them or jump over a penguin; rockhoppers can't jump over more than one penguin.

Can you swap the adult rockhoppers with the young rockhoppers? What is the smallest number of moves in which you can do this?

Classic problems to solve

Experiment with different numbers of adult and young penguins.

• Can you always swap the penguins over without having to move any penguins backwards? Can you predict how many moves it will take you?

• Can you swap the penguins over when the number of adult and young penguins is not the same? Can you predict how many moves it will take you?