It's the Curriculum, Stupid
When you learning walk
How did we get this focus on the curriculum?
Back in 2019, the good people at Ofsted asked themselves a brilliant question.
Are our lesson observations either valid or reliable?
They observed in pairs of HMI, and then completed an evaluation of 18 features, spread across Behaviour, Teaching and Curriculum. In total, 346 paired observations were completed across 74 departments.
This is what they found:
What do the numbers mean? The numbers in the bar chart are Kappa statistics. And what they mean is in the table below:
Yes, that’s right. HMI who have experience of hundreds and possibly thousands of lesson observations, are in only ‘moderate’ agreement.
One of the reasons for this moderate agreement is that HMI are not used to watching lessons in order understand the curriculum.
The Implication for Schools
There is simply little hope for teachers and leaders in schools doing even as well as this. The report says:
Inspectors explained that they often found it difficult to distinguish between the teaching and curriculum indicators during observations, hinting that these are perhaps focused on relatively similar things and are more closely related than we had originally envisaged in our design. This is not entirely unsurprising, considering the unique design of curriculum in our model.
Further work is required to develop how observers approach looking at the curriculum in lessons, although our phase 3 curriculum research highlights that lesson visits will not be the only way we will assess curriculum under EIF.
Their solution to this problem does make a lot of sense. They won’t just look at lessons.
Lesson observation, in the EIF, will be part of a suite of methods available for the deep-dive process to aid inspectors in evaluating the quality of education.
Valid outcomes will be generated from synthesising the evidence that comes from these independent activities.
But We Can Do a Better Job in Schools
When I visit schools I try to structure my time so that it is more effective than Ofsted. This means more paired observations, and spacing these out over time - weeks or months.
But I also believe it is possible to focus on the curriculum in much more meaningful ways than Ofsted do. Let me show you using Rosenshine’s Principles.
Rosenshine’s 17 Principles of Effective Instruction
Begin a lesson with a short review of previous learning.
Present new material in small steps with student practice after each step.
Limit the amount of material students receive at one time.
Give clear and detailed instructions and explanations.
Ask a large number of questions and check for understanding.
Provide a high level of active practice for all students.
Guide students as they begin to practice.
Think aloud and model steps.
Provide models of worked-out problems.
Ask students to explain what they have learned.
Check the responses of all students.
Provide systematic feedback and corrections.
Use more time to provide explanations.
Provide many examples.
Reteach material when necessary.
Prepare students for independent practice.
Monitor students when they begin independent practice.
Those in bold are characteristics of a sound curriculum.
Begin a lesson with a short review of previous learning.
How many acts of retrieval can you make students do in 10 minutes? Do Nows of 5 questions are a joke measured against the 15 - 40 acts of retrieval a good curriculum can put in place in that 10 minute block.
Unless your students are blurting, written answers need to be 1-3 words in order to achieve volume.
Quiz, gap fills, true/false, odd ones out - pre-plan these and have them written out for students to answer orally, or write 1-3 word answers. You’ll blitz through a lot. Cold call to make all students participate and retrieve.
Present new material in small steps with student practice after each step.
This is all about the planned teaching sequence, and the planned resources and activities that go with it. Put them in a booklet.
‘I do, we do, you do’. Or, the more productive ‘See, Try, Apply, Secure’ - where the Try or Apply stage is often done in a pair, and students get an extra practice step.
Limit the amount of material students receive at one time.
Booklets. Exactly the right material, in the right order, and linked to the worked examples and model answers. The most efficient way to teach an academic subject.
Provide a high level of active practice for all students.
That’s the teaching sequence again. And, of course, booklets.
Active practice also means Silent Solo activities, 10 - 30 minutes long, where students have to apply what they are learning.
Provide models of worked-out problems.
Booklets, booklets, booklets.
How many essays would teach every question which would come up on a literature text? My prediction is 6. At GCSE, that is Shakespeare, 19th Century, 20th Century, Poetry Anthology and Unseen Poem. 30 exemplar essays in total.
Ideally, you will also want another 30 which are grade 5 or 6, so students at all levels can see the difference, and understand how to improve their own essays.
How many departments have this in place? (Yes, this is probably just a rhetorical question).
And this holds true for KS3 as well. How many worked examples will students need in order to master any assessment or writing genre? Whatever your answer, it is probably many more than your students actually get in their curriculum.
Use more time to provide explanations.
Your curriculum needs to plan where this time is. It needs to instruct teachers to use it to provide explanations.
Of course this, and the quality of those explanations, can be dramatically improved by the curriculum. Put them in your booklets. Get your teachers to make short videos of explanation and link them to your resources. Or use great ones that already exist on digital platforms.
Provide many examples.
Hmm. Booklets?
Yes, of course booklets!
Reteach material when necessary.
How do you find out when it is necessary? With the right assessments.
This means they need to cover enough of the curriculum content to see what has not been remembered.
It means that tasks need to test the precise applications of knowledge which would be valued even if there were no GCSE.
It means the grade or score is not as meaningful as where marks are lost. This needs to be clearly identifiable through the construction of the assessment.
The other unusual thing to consider is the word ‘necessary’. If you administer a pre-test, students will remember more of what you then teach them. But, you will also have a measure of what your class know already. How many year 7 lessons will be dramatically improved with that simple test?
Prepare students for independent practice.
Your PowerPoint (if you are still using these) or your booklet (which you can teach from via the visualiser, or as a live document) will specify what should be practised and when.
These can be sequenced in steps, building to the whole, or can go straight in at the whole first - that way students learn which steps will be most relevant to them.
It will provide the right worked examples and models so that students know exactly what they are practising towards.
That’s 9 out of 17 principles, entirely dependent on the curriculum.
What About the Rest?
Give clear and detailed instructions and explanations.
Many of these can be written in the booklets and slides.
Ask a large number of questions and check for understanding.
Many of these will be preplanned in the retrieval tasks, usually in the do now.
Check the responses of all students.
Your booklet or slide can contain this label: Cold Call. Or it might have this instruction: ‘your teacher will now Cold Call at random to check your understanding’.
Provide systematic feedback and corrections.
Your booklet or slide can contain this label: Show Call. Or it might have this instruction: ‘your teacher will now Show Call and give feedback. Make notes so that you can adapt your work using this feedback’.
It’s the Curriculum
So, here we are. At least 70% of Rosenshine is the curriculum.
I can watch you teach and give you brilliant feedback. You might act on all of it. But it will never have the impact of improving your curriculum.
And, if there is just one other teacher in your subject, that effect is doubled.
An average English department will have about 8 teachers. A curriculum focus to your lesson feedback will have 8X the impact.
What are you waiting for?