"Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns." - Charlotte Bronte
Is behaviour worse in schools? 🧵
Almost universally the (hundreds of) schools I have spoken to have said YES - and attributed this to mental health and emotional problems arising from the pandemic. BUT . . .
. . . in the few schools I’ve spoken to where they say behaviour is as good as, or better than, before they’ve focused on orderly environment, clear expectations and consistent policy around behaviour.
You get what you reinforce, as the old saying goes. Give lots of time and attention to self-control, diligence, courtesy and respect, and we will likely see more of it.
Teachers, the full-out assault in recent days is co-ordinated and deliberate. It’s purpose is to shape a narrative that *when* schools aren’t able to ‘open’ on 1 June, it will be your fault, not that of the government who promised but couldn’t deliver. See also PPE etc.
Give lots of time and attention to why children can’t be expected to behave at the same standards as they used to, and we will get lots more children feeling they don’t have to behave at those standards.
@afneil
is correct. It’s also true that a lot more testing capacity is in now place. But is there any clear strategy for how it will be used to get us out of lockdown, and get the economy moving again? It feels like the focus is still on PR, not public health.
Let’s now disaggregate this. The 122,000 total includes almost 40,000 tests posted to homes and patients in hospital. There are no figures for how many of the 40,000 we’re actually tested/processed. Also only 73,000 people were checked as some had multiple tests.
Have worked with a number of secondary schools with no library or librarian. Tends to be something new leaders inherit, and are desperate to fix, but it is striking that once lost, v difficult to get back. What has been happening in education that we would cancel libraries?
And no, that’s not simplistic or reductive. Good behaviour policy provides clear expectations, predictable routines and additional support for the few children who need it. But if ‘few’ becomes ‘many’, support systems are overwhelmed and standards crash.
The replies to this. Seriously, if you don’t know that you have to teach children explicitly how to act in different settings, you’re not qualified to make a professional comment.
Also great to see that the site continues to develop. These posters were designed by our excellent librarian, Mr Harris, and are in every classroom - and now on the corridors to reinforce our message and ethos.
One of the most experienced, informed voices on behaviour. Full of sound advice e.g. we’re past the pandemic, don’t victimise children by treating them as if they can’t help their behaviour now. They can and it’s healthy to hold them to account.
If you think Sold A Story is pushing ´phonics only’, you are buying into the obfuscations of those whose sub-standard training, materials and practices have damaged millions of lives.
In the thread below,
@ehanford
refutes these misrepresentations of her work - very well.
I'm seeing a lot of response to Sold a Story and to my work more generally. And I'm seeing something inaccurate being said. It's being said by people who are defending themselves. It's also being said by people who are promoting better instruction based on scientific research. 🧵
If we really want to level up:
Have a gorgeous library in every town over 3,000 people, which includes a literacy centre so that anyone, of any age, can learn to read well.
That’s how we can change the world for the better.
Let’s not forget the dream of universal literacy.
Many people will soon be sitting down to cosy Christmas dinners to enliven the darkness of winter. Spare a thought for those of us trapped in s Southern Hemisphere summer, trapped in a subtropical paradise and spoilt rotten by family. It is SO tough. Merry Christmas.
Today's Sunday Times article claims that there is a crisis in reading, as if we haven't had one for decades. Let's get the facts straight, and our priorities right:
@Learncompsci
Consistency from the top all the way down is required. If leaders aren’t consistent, it’s game over. For teachers, obvs. Senior leaders can insulate themselves if they want, while everyone else suffers.
This is, in my view, exactly why we have such a dangerous government now, and why we will again if we don’t climb off our tribal horses and work together - highest priority, electoral reform that ensures representation is linked to all votes.
The evaluation of AR found that children who started the programme in Year 5 and Year 4, on average, made no additional progress in reading compared to children in comparison schools.
Find out more:
Read the full report:
My key message at
#rEdKent
today: there are no magic bullets, but *nothing* gives a return on investment like teaching a child to read - at any stage of their education.
Sharing this with any schools who think AR is a reading intervention. Great to see clarity from the providers that it is not a tool to teach reading. Hugely helpful.
@Team_English1
@HoratioSpeaks
Hi James! AR isn't a tool to teach reading - it motivates independent reading practice and reading for pleasure. Celebrating Word Millionaires is just one way schools can use AR data to give an element of competition & motivate students to read more. (1)
I found school a stable and safe place in difficult circumstances. But I went there to learn, not for love, and learn I did. Important not to oversimplify and stereotype. Our fundamental job is teaching kids stuff that makes them smarter. That’s the best loving we can provide.
"Children who are loved at home, come to school to learn; those that aren't, come to school to be loved."
From a headteacher a while back and it stayed with me. For many children, going back to school this week is a return to a stable and loving environment.
#backtoschool
Agree, and also: if children ‘correct’ nonsense words to known words, they are not fluent readers at all. They are using whole-language strategies to guess instead of decode. Which is what the PSC is designed to expose, and why whole language proponents hate it so much.
Don’t read this thread if you aren’t up to more dystopian news. But the media’s bland treatment of many thousands of deaths is dystopian. The growing personality cult of Johnson is dystopian. Meanwhile, NZ has 1/12 of UK population and has had one death. Think about that.
The death toll from coronavirus was over 900 people in 24 hours. So what do the media focus on? The fact Boris Johnson apparently sat up in bed. Hey, that's good... but what about all those deaths?! Why were we shouting about Italy for so long, but not now about ourselves?
Investigative journalism may be harder to find, but
@BylineTimes
has some crackers, especially the recent signing of
@sianushka
Some very rapid butt-covering following this story, and some very illuminating information on the protagonists:
When I started writing this story about Tory links to the Invicta Academy, Tory MPs, councillors & associates were described as "sponsors". After I requested a comment, the Sponsors page was deleted & replaced with supporters:
@BylineTimes
OTD 45 years ago:
On a beautiful spring day in New Zealand, I said “I do” to this wonderful man.
@HoratioSpeaks
Who knew what would follow?
Two daughters.
A move to the other side of the world.
The satisfaction of working together ensuring all children learn to read.
Why is the attainment gap increasing? A very cogent question, since as
@daisychristo
explains, stronger students are getting stronger as well as weak getting weaker.
There is understandable concern about what students will have missed, or forgotten, in September. My guess is things won’t feel that different, because *every* year we !have to re-teach stuff students have forgotten. This is because we don’t teach them so that they can’t forget.
This is just half of what you need to read to know you’re safe to have a vaccination. So what happens to the millions of people who went to school but didn’t learn to read? This why literacy is an urgent social issue. It’s not a ‘nice to have’. It can be life or death.
In case you are under the delusion that anything in education is more important than getting the teaching of reading right, here's what happens when we don't. ‘I was a teacher for 17 years, but I couldn’t read or write’
There are a lot of interesting sentences in this piece but this one really stood out:
´At one point during Beth Rigby’s evisceration of the Prime Minister on Sky I quite literally had to hide behind the sofa.´
New post on the disastrous Tory party conference, what a Truss reset could look like, and the mechanism for removing her if things don't get better quickly.
"Out of Control"
(First half free to read; second half for subscribers)
Great thoughts on how teachers can develop student writing in much smaller steps than we often do. Sharp focus, immediate feedback, time to revise and improve.
@amymayforrester
Possibly the first time in history where civil disobedience involves behaving responsibly in defiance of a wildly irresponsible government.
The most interesting thing about Gavin Williamson poking the edutwitter hive with a stick is how many people, once provoked, are capable of creating a dystopian fiction around the idea of students being quiet and paying attention.
@PamelaSnow2
@ThinkReadTweet
@tombennett71
We have so many stories of ‘problem’ students who made remarkable turnarounds once they learned to read. And schools consistently report a strong correlation between poor reading and poor behaviour.
What better Father’s Day gift from my daughter than a Cameo from the wonderful Rosie Holt (
@rosieisaholt
) Demonstrating excellent research skills and her usual brilliance!
#cameofameo
via
@bookcameo
Deeply impressed what
@BarryNSmith79
and the team
@GYCharter
have achieved in such a short time. Students we spoke to were very positive. Huge potential being unlocked! Keep going!
Australian academic resurrects straw man, gives it a thrashing:
"He said the problem was with those who advocate phonics as the only approach."
Name one professional who is a phonics advocate who says this.
Given that we aren't even teaching them to read properly yet, why would anyone expect us to be training up critical news analysts? 20% are arriving at secondary without the skills they need to understand classroom material, let alone contextualise digital bias and falsehood.
The national curriculum is not equipping children with the critical literacy skills they need to survive and thrive in the digital age, says the
@Literacy_Trust
Fake News Commission.
Cambridge Analytica documents dumped online last night prove the data hacker’s involvement with both the Leave EU & official Vote Leave campaigns, as well as further evidence of connection between Bannon, Farage & Aaron Banks - killing the theory it didn’t intervene in Brexit.
⏰Excellent timing! The new '
@researchED1
Guide to Literacy' edited by
@HoratioSpeaks
is back, just in time for our 50% off Black Friday promotion this week. Use code CATT50 on the SHOPPING CART page for 50% off any order - before midnight Friday.
Urgh at this framing. Private schools don't own the places. As more and more state school pupils compete for places of course they will get fewer each year.
When speakers like Mark Diamond make recourse to claims about money to deny the importance of systematic phonics, they demonstrate:
1. They have run out of arguments.
2. They lack integrity.
#phonicsdebate
@adamboxer1
Require schools to report standardised test scores for reading at end y9. Really simple but makes it apparent who’s doing something and who’s not. Relatively cheap but massive implications for future life and for society.
Excuses for ensuring poor children do worse:
Children must learn through play
Developmentally 'not ready'
Specific learning disabilities
Class, gender stereotyping
'Disadvantage'
Write on, QT!
I’m increasingly coming to the view that Accelerated Reader is highly inequitable. It rewards those children who can already read well. How do those who can’t read become ‘word millionaires’?
How are schools finding enough time for students to become word millionaires in one year... Are you letting the students take the books home? Do you have timetabled Accelerated Reader lessons?
@Team_English1
@AccReader
Important response to a disappointing and predictably shallow paper that claims phonics teaching is bad, once you change what you measure and leave out the relevant evidence.
It's been a challenge to write but we're hoping people will get the message that all secondary teachers will be more use to their students if they understand how reading works, and what to do when it doesn't.
When children learn to read after years of failure, major changes in behaviour, motivation and mood follow. Read more in our latest blog ‘Learning to Read – what started going right?’ (7 min read).
#EduTwitter
@jon_hutchinson_
V few people in secondary schools know much about phonics. Or about related reading skills and reading acquisition. If students and teachers learn and teach through language, then teachers need to understand language deeply - regardless of subject or year group.
This paper from
@buckingham_j
is concise, lucid and damning. Essential reading for anyone concerned with early reading, reading intervention, and educational policy around the funding of reading interventions.
Reading Recovery: Evidence from studies involving thousands of children shows a short term positive effect but no medium/long term benefit.
@FIVEfromFIVE
And this is why we wrote our book about adolescent reading. It's not too hard and it's not too late to solve these problems. If we don't, the results are catastrophic. Literally. The catastrophe might be silent, but it is no less real for that.
Lots to challenge in this - many of the ‘SoR claims’ that being debunked are actually straw men.
Example 1. SoR advocates have always advocated for ‘The Big Five’ not just phonics.
Robert Tierney and David Pearson take a close look at 10 major assertions that are often put forward by advocates of the "Science of Reading" (SoR) approach to literacy instruction. SoR has gained a lot of traction recently, with its emphasis on explicit, systematic phonics as
Nothing illustrates the unreal world created by social media better than the vehemence with which people argue for complying with ideas that have no basis in the real world.
Thus, schools are prisons; teachers are oppressive; questions in class are either cruel or capitalist . .
@AccReader
Thank you for being so explicit about AR not being a tool to teach reading. Many schools seem confused on this point so I will point them to your tweet in future.
What is sometimes overlooked is the two arrows. ‘Increasingly strategic’ comprehension required ‘increasingly automatic’ decoding. Some guidance leaves out this crucial element.
At Greenwich High School for
#researchEDG
. Buzzing crowd in the biggest school I think I’ve ever visited. All set up to talk about how not being able to read affects young people emotionally and socially- and what we can do about it!
It’s very sad that 186 people died of coronavirus today, like so many other days lately, and we’ve just become used to it.
Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends.
Not numbers.
People.
Excellent and thought-provoking talk by
@gdmorewood
at Essex sec HTs conference. What helps autistic learners also benefits non-autistic students. How to redesign learning contexts to reduce everyone’s stress. 👍🏻
Reading isn’t just about reading: “...the single most powerful predictor of their ability to overcome the trauma and survive their circumstances is the ability to read.”