Month: August 2020

  • Intellivision Summer

    Intellivision Summer

    Back in 1983 my mum rented an Intellivision games console from Radio Rentals. She couldn’t afford to buy a console so she added it to the colour tv she rented. I actually wanted an Atari 2600 at the time but that wasn’t available from Radio Rentals. Some of the kids at school had owned an Atari 2600 for years. It was one of those things that made me realise that we weren’t as well-off as lots of other families. The Intellivisision had been on sale for two years before we got one.

    We were given a choice of one game with the unit from a list that included Donkey Kong and Burger Time. Instead of choosing a decent game, I insisted we got the Tron movie tie-in, Maze-a-Tron. Tron had recently been shown in cinemas and I loved Tron. The game’s box art looks amazing on the flyer my mum brought home.

    The game was terrible.

    None of the shops in our town sold Intellivision games so Maze-a-Tron was the only game we had and played it to death for about six months well into the Summer of 1983. The kids at school swapped Atari games. No one else had an Intellivision.

    Maze-a-Tron is a pretty dull game. You play as Tron running around a side-moving maze trying to avoid the recognisers (the flying vehicles) and, every so often, using a disc to destroy the MCP. It was incredibly repetative and frustrating.

    At some point the Intellivision was shoved behind the TV and laid dusty and forgotten for about 20 years until it got thrown out with all my mum’s things after she died. She’d paid for it monthly all the way up to her death. It had been paid for well beyond its cost (and actual value).

    I’ve just been trying to play Maze-a-Tron along with the (slightly better) Deadly Discs and Solar Sailor. It’s part of a general nostalgia I have for my childhood from time-to-time where I try to recapture that sense of joy I had as a boy for stuff like this.

    None of the games play well or seem to be any good. Maze-a-Tron is still a terrible game. I’m not sure why I felt nostagia for the Intellivision anyhow!

    why did the cover have to make the game look so good?

  • Why is Shakespeare the only compulsory content area in this year’s English Literature GCSE?

    Why is Shakespeare the only compulsory content area in this year’s English Literature GCSE?

    Amid the controversy over poetry being made optional in the 2021 English Literature GCSEs, there’s been little mention that the examination of a Shakespeare play is the only non-optional component. It’s possible to trace this requirement back to the 1989 Cox Report which is when the first statutory requirement for teaching Shakespeare was introduced. The question I’ve got is why is Shakespeare specifically mandatory?

    Shakespeare has a mythic status in Britain which is difficult to pin down other than a pervading agreement by all that there is something culturally worthy in his writing that schools are expected to teach. Somehow, there is a general consensus that learning about Shakespeare makes a positive (and moral) impact on individuals’ personal growth, contributes to a sense of there being a cohesive national identity and somehow enables economic prosperity.

    When was Shakespeare made so important in schools?

    Shakespeare was first named as an author in the revised Standards of Education in 1882. Sarah Olive in the excellent Shakespeare Valued (2015) says the Victorians associated Shakespeare with a “gold standard” of literacy. For Standard VI, children needed to read a passage from either one of Shakespeare’s Histories, of another standard author or from any history of England. (I find it interesting that Shakespeare is connected with English history right there from this start.) Olive goes on to say: “Shakespeare had, by the latter half of the nineteenth century, been incorporated into a curriculum of sorts and used to demarcate the highest performing students from their peers.” This placement of Shakespeare as a means of discriminating between more and less able children by the Victorians and established the value and nature of Shakespeare in state education.

    Still, why Shakespeare and not any other great poet or writer? Chaucer? Milton? Keats?

    On this train of thought, I wonder the extent of Matthew Arnold’s influence on Shakespeare’s place in the English school curriculum. In Arnold’s The Study of Poetry (1888), he repeatedly makes the case that “Chaucer is not one of the great classics…” Arnold goes on to say that what is missing from Chaucer is the Aristotlian “poetic virtue of seriousness” or “high poetic seriousness”:

    For Arnold, the greatest poets were Milton and Shakespeare. Milton is “the one artist of the highest rank in the great style” and better than Shakespeare in Arnold’s estimation. Milton has a “sure and flawless perfection of his rhythm and diction… No one else in English literature and art possesses the like disinction.” On the other hand: “Shakespeare is divinely strong, rich, and attractive. But sureness of perfect style Shakespeare himself does not possess.” Arnold’s devotion to Milton seems to me to be admiration for the strong sense of Christianity and his belief in the superiority of Greek and Latin which he sees Milton as channelling in English poetry. (In his essay on Wordsworth, Arnold writes approvingly of a comment which suggests that Shakespeare control of rhythm, musicality of language prose, style, expressing interior thought and feeling.)

    For Arnold, it was the sense of consequence which marked great literature:

    The substance of Chaucer’s poetry, his view of things and criticism of life, has largeness, freedom, shrewdness, benignity; but it has not this high seriousness. Homer’s criticism of life has it, Dante’s has it, Shakespeare’s has it.

    The Newbolt Report (1922) – which essentially established English as a school subject in a form that’s recognisable to today – agreed that Shakespeare was necessary but recommended that Shakespeare was taught as extension to all pupils. This echoes what George Sampson had urged in English for the English:

    “Shakespeare is not only difficult but archaic as well; and thus he seems doubly unsuitable for young readers. Fortunately, he is saved for the schools by his wonderful power of re-telling a story in dramatic form and his equally wonderful power of characterisation, and we may add, his incomparable mastery of word-music. Indeed, it is Shakespeare the musician as much as Shakespeare the dramatist to whom we must introduce our pupils.”

    In A Language for Life (1975), the Bulloch Report barely mentioned Shakespeare (once plus a mention in a dissenting note by Black Papers contributor and headteacher Stuart Froome). Bulloch discusses the value of teaching Literature as bringing children:

    into an encounter with language in its most complex and varied forms. Through these complexities are presented the thoughts, experiences, and feelings of people who exist outside and beyond the reader’s daily awareness. This process of bringing them within that circle of consciousness is where the greatest value of literature lies. It provides imaginative insight into what another person is feeling; it allows the contemplation of possible human experiences which the reader himself has not met.

    The Kingman Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Teaching of English Language (1988), barely mentions Shakespeare.

    Sarah Olive in Shakespeare Valued suggests that it was the late-1980s policy-makers combined with the amount of pedagogic literature created as a consequence of the introduction of the National Curriculum and the influence of organisations like the RSC, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and The Globe.

    Sarah Olive in Shakespeare Valued (2015) – which is, as far as I can tell, the only major study of why Shakespeare has a central value in education (although limited to the period 1989-2009) – argues that

    The curriculum is silent about what should be achieved through the study of Shakespeare in particular. Standards to which students should aspire in their work are defined across English rather than in relation to Shakespeare: the skills, and increasing quality with which they are to be performed… Furthermore, reasons why Shakespeare might be the most fitting author to make compulsory go unwritten

    It’s an excellent, informative analysis. Early on she cites Michael Bristol’s Big-Time Shakespeare (1996) which examines how the policies of the Thatcher government commercialised Shakespeare and presents the “phenomenon” of Shakespeare as being “collectively ‘generated out of the innumerable small-time accomplishments of actors and directors, advertising copy-writers, public relations specialists, as well as scholars, editors, and educators’”.

    Olive argues that the post-1989 teaching of Shakespeare has been affected by “broader agendas for raising skills, standards and social inclusion” by both Conservative and Labour governments and that they remain united in their attitude that Shakespeare contributes to economic, moral and social growth. She identified Professor Cox, who had been taught by Leavis at Cambridge as responsible for the literary recommendations established in the National Curriculum. She presents him as Arnoldian in his belief that great literature has a humanistic value. Olive claims that Thatcher was not interested in the details other than having a preoccupation with language and “skills”.

    Cox gave far more emphasis to Shakespeare in English than ever before for Ages 5 to 16 (1989):

    Many teachers believe that Shakespeare’s work conveys universal values, and that his language expresses rich and subtle meanings beyond that of any other English writer. Other teachers point out that evaluations of Shakespeare have varied from one historical period to the next, and they argue that pupils should be encouraged to think critically about his status in the canon. But almost everyone agrees that his work should be represented in a National Curriculum. Shakespeare’s plays are so rich that in every age they can produce fresh meanings and even those who deny his universality agree on his cultural importance.

    As far as I’m aware, this is the only official explanation why Shakespeare has the importance in the curriculum that he has today.

    Cox also emphasised an active approach to teaching Shakespeare and other literature:

    Pupils exposed to this type of participatory, exploratory approach to literature can acquire a firm foundation to proceed to more formal literary responses should they subsequently choose to do so.

    Cox didn’t seem to have the same imperative to study Shakespeare in dry, academic fashion we see today and, instead, gave teachers much more professional agency in the manner in which Shakespeare was taught:

    every pupil should be given at least some experience of the plays or poetry of Shakespeare. Whether this is through the study, viewing or performance of whole plays or of selected poems or scenes should be entirely at the discretion of the teacher.

    He also insisted that Shakespeare should be taught as drama:

    pupils should approach plays through the dramatic medium. This exploratory and performance-based approach will not only lead to a deeper understanding of the text in question (a dramatic exploration of a speech in Shakespeare, for instance, will show how the placing of different emphases can alter fundamentally one’s interpretation of character or meaning) but will also lead to an understanding of the play as theatre. Performance-based activity may, of course, take place at classroom level, in small-scale improvisational sessions or in text work. Where practical, however, pupils should be encouraged to take every opportunity to widen their experience of audiences and/or co-actors. The mounting of school productions and active involvement in community or touring theatre initiatives are thus of immense value.

    The Warwick Evaluation noted that teachers felt that the National Curriculum had altered their teaching of Literature by increasing the amount of literature-based activities and ensuring the SAT requirements were met. This included teaching plays by Shakespeare. Teaching the required Shakespeare play in Year 9 was related as taking up a great deal of time (and caused them to abandon schemes of work in order to prepare children for assessments – I remember this well!).

    The 2004 revised NC prescribed: “two plays by Shakespeare, one of which should be studied in key stage 3”. In the early 2000s, the newly-founded AQA English GCSE syllabus included Shakespeare as a coursework “crossover” piece whose “task should enable candidates to demonstrate their understanding of, and engagement with, at least one play by Shakespeare studied during Key Stage 4… it must allow the candidate to demonstrate awareness of social and historical influences, cultural contexts and literary traditions which shaped Shakespeare’s writing and/or which have influenced subsequent interpretations of his work.” The form or genre was not prescribed and enabled students to respond to characters, specific scenes or specific performances. Unthinkably – from today’s standpoint – students could present their knowledge and understanding orally. It was made clear that any answer needed to show “sufficient evidence of textual knowledge”.

    Some attempts were made in 2008 to encourage a more active and considered approach to Shakespeare in 2008’s Shakespeare for All Ages and Stages but this remained vague about why. I’ve written about it here.

    More recently, things have largely shifted towards the approaches to teaching Shakespeare focus purely on securing exam results. Practices which would have been condemned as encouraging “unsympathetic attitudes to literature” (see below) for nearly a century of English teaching are currently all the rage.

    Am I surprised that no one has even asked why Shakespeare is considered the only compulsory element of next year’s GCSE English Literature? No, not really.

    Shakespeare in Exams

    My understanding is that Shakespeare has been used as a mechanism of assessment in secondary schools since the Second World War. The type of questions in this paper remain similar for the next fifty years: a number of short-answer questions about details of plot and character followed by a longer question requiring the candidate to respond to the whole text. This 1957 exam paper shows the sort of responses expected of candidates for O-level.

    Up until the 1970s children would either paraphrase passages or identified characters and aspects of plot. This approach was replaced by passages for close analysis based on a detailed knowledge of the play (I would imagine this was a response to the impact of the followers of Leavis like David Holbrook and Peter Abbs). This far more analytical approach was made “open book” so children had access to a text in order to show critical appreciation.

    Changes in the 1970s seem to be a focus on the requirement to “refer to words” in longer answers. In a 1974 London exam board O-level paper, the longer Macbeth questions were:

    ‘Security is mortals’ chiefest enemy’ Write a short paragraph explaining what this line means. Then show in what ways the truth of this statement is illustrated, by referring to the words and behaviour of both Macbeth and Duncan.

    Trace the stages by which Lady Macbeth becomes gradually less dominant during the course of the play, making clear your changing feelings towards her as the play progresses.

    In the 1980s, O-level Shakespeare seem to have been a similar mixture of short answer questions about specific details from a play (eg. “What two things has Caliban told Stephane to do in order to destroy Prospero (line 30)?”) and longer answer whole-text responses, for example on Macbeth:

    Re-read the last part of Act 1 scene 3 from the point where the witches disappear (line 79) to the end of the scene. Write about the different ways in which Macbeth and Banquo react in this scene. How does the relationship between them develop as the play continues?

    1984 English Literature O-level, Cambridge Examinations

    In the report on the 1984 English Lit O-level, the examiners insist that:

    “The question of direction is a fundamental cause of concern. The vigour and thrust of this paper stems from an intention which should be present in the teaching and at all stages of approach to literature: to enable people to read with perception, thought and sensitivity but without predetermined directions. In setting questions we still have a good deal to learn about how to open questions freely without implying directions to candidates about ‘approved’ ways of thinking.”

    (As an aside it is incredibly frustrating to compare the way that the report disparages the “unsympathetic attitudes to literature” developed in the manner in which children were prepared for CSEs and O-levels. These are the self-same approaches currently lauded in our exam-fixated English classrooms.)

    What Shakespeare has and is actually taught?

    Based on looking at which plays were taught for exam, it looks like following World War 2, Richard II and The Merchant of Venice were chiefly set. (It’s worth pointing out that children were also required to read Chaucer – another indication that Shakespeare did not have supreme importance in the Literature curriculum). In the 1970s tastes changed to Macbeth and Twelfth Night. In the 1980s, The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream appear to be the favoured texts.

    In a recent issue of English in Education, Victoria Elliott and Sarah Olive surveyed teachers and discovered that Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream were the most taught plays up to GCSE. In sixth form the choice of plays were:

  • Shakespeare for All Ages and Stages

    Shakespeare for All Ages and Stages

    In 2008 – during the era of the various National Strategies – the Department for Children, Schools and Families in collaboration with organisations like the QCA and RSC produced Shakespeare for All Ages and Stages, not only a booklet giving guidance on the teaching of Shakespeare in schools but what it variously describes as a “framework of opportunities” or even a “map of opportunities”.

    Don’t groan when you see the pun in the title, though. It seems to have been unintentional.

    It’s noticeable that it begins by asking the question “Why Shakespeare?” and immediately finds difficulty in articulating why Shakespeare is so essential for teaching in schools. Instead of celebrating Shakespeare’s humanism or literary qualities, the booklet places Shakespeare’s economic value and world-standing as of primary importance:

    His work is at the centre of Britain’s twenty-first century theatre industry, is constantly adapted for film, has been translated into hundreds of languages and is performed throughout the world today.

    Shakespeare’s other purpose is in enabling social and political considerations:

    Watching, performing and reading the work of this extraordinary poet and playwright asks us both to challenge and celebrate our social and personal lives. Shakespeare can open up brave new worlds to young people and offer them fresh ways of dealing with familiar ones. His work can challenge our language skills and introduce us to new realms of poetic playfulness. He can extend our concepts of what fiction can do, and of what stories a drama can tell. Working with Shakespeare can be challenging but is eminently rewarding, rich and fulfilling.

    Why Shakespeare, though? Why Shakespeare is elevated to importance above other writers isn’t addressed. Why not Chaucer? Milton? Keats? Is it because Shakespeare wrote more surviving plays than his contemporaries? (Shakespeare does seem to win by the numbers: Shakespeare: 40, Middleton: 30+, Jonson: 20+, Marlowe: 17, Fletcher: 16+, Webster: 9). The “Why Shakespeare?” question isn’t answered at all. Instead we’re to be dazzled into teaching Shakespeare by his reputation and “relevance”.

    The booklet gives a “framework of opportunities” in which “significant experiences” are recommended. Perhaps this booklet was aimed more at primary teachers as many of the “significant experiences” it suggests would be fairly routine in secondary schools: studying the plays, watch a production, use dramatic approaches to explore the plays.

    Bearing in mind this was produced during the great era of objectives of the National Strategies, the “opportunities” are transformed into year on year objectives:

    After that there are “Suggested Teaching Approaches from the Foundation Stage to Key Stage 4” which are linked to strands of the primary and secondary Literacy Frameworks.

    Many of the teaching approaches are based on encouraging younger children to consider texts in terms of literary heritage. For instance, Year Seven students should be taught “To engage with some of the issues, themes and ideas in Shakespeare’s plays and to appreciate the way they remain relevant in the 21st century”. It suggests that Year Eight students should be taught “To understand how characters’ actions reflect the social, historical and cultural contexts of Shakespeare’s time”. Another is “To understand the cultural significance of Shakespeare and his place in our literary heritage”.

    In Years Nine and Ten there’s a focus on characters, dramatic conventions and language but, in Year Eleven we’re back with the “relevance” of Shakespeare. The objectives for Year Eleven are “To understand the significance of the social, historical and cultural contexts of a Shakespeare play” and “To appreciate the moral and philosophical significance of Shakespeare’s plays and their relevance for a contemporary audience”.

    There are interesting ideas in the booklet for English teachers to use – particularly active approaches – that encourage students to consider the play as a drama (for example, sculpting a scene or creating models of stages). Bearing in mind I’ve just read a book where practical learning tasks are disparaged in favour of “knowledge instruction”, lots of the ideas are quite refreshing and a reminder that the philistine and rote-driven teaching which dominates English lessons at the moment doesn’t need to be this way.

    Shakespeare for All Ages and Stages can be downloaded here.

    Macbeth

    There are some teaching suggestions for Macbeth provided in the booklet:

    • “Hot-seating a character at a moment of dilemma, for example, Macbeth after the murder of Duncan. The teacher might be hot- seated by pupils first in order to model the process before moving on to thought tracking whereby pupils can be taken from ‘public answers’ to more private responses in order to reveal the differences between what a character says and what they might really think.” (Year 3)
    • “Giving pupils the opening scene of Macbeth, perhaps on the whiteboard, and practise chanting the lines together with them. Show pupils images or extracts from one or two productions to see how the witches have been portrayed. Ask them how they would portray the witches and ask them to act out the scene in groups of three. Compare the different presentations, and encourage each group to explain why they presented their witches in a particular way.” (Year 3)
    • “Taking a play with a strong theme, e.g. ambition in Macbeth and helping pupils to explore it through a familiar scenario, e.g. “Have you ever been temped to do something that you knew was wrong because you wanted something very badly?” Ask pupils to explore this through discussion or role play before exploring it in the context of the play.” (Year 6)
    • There’s a description of a cross-phase project at Larkmead School based on Macbeth which involved simple drama work, storyboards and use of software (Kar2ouche) for children to animate scenes.
    • “Taking a significant scene from a play and exploring its various interpretations in two or three different film versions. Possible film versions include Macbeth (Polanski’s 1971 version and the RSC’s 1979 version starring Ian McKellen and Judi Dench)… Explore the effect and impact on the viewer created by each interpretation by considering the decisions made by the director with regard to setting, costumes and how actors play their parts.” (Year 7)
    • “…focus on modern parallels to some of Shakespeare’s key themes, for example, by: …How far would I be prepared to go to get something I really want? (Macbeth)” (Year 7)
    • “Exploring the very real belief in witches and their malign influence as portrayed in Macbeth (James 1 had taken part in the interrogation of witches and believed that they had attempted to drown him on a sea voyage). Ask pupils to contrast the reactions of Macbeth and Banquo to the witches in Act 1 Scene 3 or explore Lady Macbeth’s reaction to her husband’s letter in Act 1, Scene 5.” (Year 8)
    • “Placing the name of a key character on the wall or screen and annotating it with quotations which focus on his or her feelings and state of mind at key points in the play. This activity is best applied to a character who undergoes change or development from the beginning to the end of the play: Prospero from The Tempest is a good example as are Macbeth and King Lear.” (Year 9)
    • “Exploring some of Shakespeare’s villains, such as Iago, Macbeth, Richard III, Don Pedro, Claudius, etc. As a starting point, take a character from the current play who might be considered a villain and place him or her on a continuum with other Shakespearian villains, from those whose evil seems inexplicable to those who are more complex, flawed characters to those who are likeable rogues. Tease out the nature of the villainy in the character in the core play. Notions of leadership, heroines, outsiders etc could be similarly explored.” (Year 10)
    • “Putting a character on trial, involving every member of the class in various ways, e.g. as a character witness, as an expert witness, as a victim of the defendant, etc. Invite pupils to make creative links with other plays, e.g. by transposing the doctor in Macbeth to stand as an expert witness for Othello or Hamlet. This might form part of a piece of speaking and listening coursework as well as a response to Shakespeare.” (Year 10)
    • “Investigating Shakespeare’s treatment of his source material and the way he adapted it for dramatic and artistic reasons, e.g. Richard III was a successful soldier and popular leader, a patron of the Arts; Macbeth was actually a good king who reigned in Scotland for many years. Pupils might write in role as Richard’s or Macbeth’s lawyers, demanding a retraction of the damaging portrayal of their clients.” (Year 11)
    • “Using whole class and group discussions and strategies such as ‘conscience corridor’, ‘walk of fame’ and ‘walk of shame’, encourage pupils to explore the moral issues that underpin the play they are studying. Build up a working wall display on these issues and allow pupils to annotate the display with quotations or their thoughts on characters’ actions that exemplify these themes. Encourage them to make connections with films, novels, and popular TV series, e.g. the parallels with the downfall of Macbeth and Darth Vader in their pursuit of power. Pupils could write the obituary for their chosen character using evidence from the play to demonstrate how their actions, their attitudes and what other characters have said and feel about them, reveal their moral position and how it is contrary to the good of society.” (Year 11)
    • “Asking pupils to identify the characters that represent moral or philosophical perspectives or could be seen as a moral touchstone for the themes of the play, e.g. Banquo and Macduff in Macbeth, Polonius in Hamlet or Cordelia in King Lear. Pupils might plan and present a 15-minute version of This is your Life using other pupils as characters who talk about the star of the show and their exemplary life.” (Year 11)

  • Irredeemable

    Irredeemable

    Mark Waid’s anti-superhero comic, Irredeemable ran from 2009 and 2012 for 36 issues collected into 10 trades. I’d read most of the series when it was first published in trades but – for some reason I can’t remember – never got round to reading the conclusion to the story. I’ve just finished reading the whole run.

    Irredeemable is an exploration of the psychological motivations that would drive super-heroics and follows the fall-out when a Superman-analogue called The Plutonian goes insane and goes on a world-wide killing spree. Plutonian’s former colleagues in The Paradigm, a version of the Justice League, become his targets and are forced to go on the run as they desperately try to stop his carnage.

    In his introduction to the first volume, Waid explains that Irredeemable is “a pulp adventure tale of horror about how the lessons we learn about right and wrong as children become warped and twisted when challenged by the realities of the adult world.” Waid calls the story “Conradian” in the way that the comic presents the erosion of idealism and the way that secrets, betrays and mistakes lead to a terribly dark place.

    I’m particularly engaged by the way in which Waid presents Plutonian’s nemesis, Modeus, a Lex Author-like scientific genius, as being motivated by a genuine romantic infatuation with Plutonian in which the villain commits crimes in order to be noticed by the hero. Also, it’s interesting that the one character who seems to have a solid sense of morality, Qubit, is non-human and does his best to try and save Plutonian, giving him repeated opportunities to… well… redeem himself.

    While its a pretty enjoyable series – Waid is a master at throwing up elements at the bottom of the page that force you to keep reading – many of the secondary heroes and almost all the secondary villains are a little flat. Probably this is because the epic nature of the comic means that there are just so many of them! It’s also a little too long. I imagine Waid sustained the comic until the sales fell away and then there’s a needless four-issue crossover towards the end with the character of Max Damage , a character from the Incorruptible comic set in the same universe.

    Grant Morrison calls Irredeemable “a simple, elegant and terrifying concept”. He’s not wrong: it’s a story about how it’s possible for the best of us to be brought down by the worst in us. Despite the genocidal actions of Plutonian, we feel a great sense of sympathy for him as we learn about his upbringing and the effect it has on his self-esteem and morality. He’s brought up without a Ma and Pa Kent to guide him. In a series of adopted parents only one, a dour devoted Christian provides him with any sense of moral agency (and even that’s somewhat damaged). He’s taught to be selfless but actually lacks a sense of selfhood.

    Some of the best parts of the comic are when the story takes a cosmic dimension. The Irredeemable universe’s Batman-analogue, Hornet, makes a pre-emptive deal with alien invaders giving them free access to conquer other dimensions in return for dealing with the Plutonian should the need arise. Plutonian ends up in an intergalactic asylum for the criminally insane, where he recruits bloodthirsty villains who help him escape and return to Earth to support him in his carnage. We even discover Plutonian’s non-human parents (which also reveals his origin in an unexpected way).

    The final issue is a super-condensed wrap up which adds an unnecessary sub-plot involving the tree of knowledge from the Garden of Eden conveying immortality on all humanity. I can also see why Waid added the denouement of the final page but it was a little awkward (I won’t reveal it.)

    I’m not sure that Waid in 2009 was treading any new ground here. Over at Marvel, creators had explored the moral ambiguity of super-heroics in Civil War a couple of years earlier. Waid himself had produced the superlative Kingdom Come for DC in 1996 and Empire in 2003. Tonally, Irredeemable most definitely follows in the footsteps of Alan Moore’s Watchmen and I think it’s no coincidence that Plutonian bears an uncanny resemblance to Marvelman.

  • Edgar Rice Burrough’s John Carter of Mars

    Edgar Rice Burrough’s John Carter of Mars

    I’m currently working my way through Edgar Rice Burrough’s Barsoom series of pulp adventure novels. A Princess of Mars, the first of the series, was a surprisingly enjoyable romp reminding me of a mix of Gulliver’s Travels, Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. While I’ve always been aware of John Carter, I’d not read any of the books in my youth. I’m not sure why as it would have been the sort of thing I’d have loved.

    Burroughs – who is possibly more famous for penning the Tarzan books – secured publication of A Princess of Mars (initially titled Under the Martian Moons) in All-Story Magazine in 1912. It was his first novel. It relates the adventures of a Confederate soldier named John Carter who is mysteriously transported to Mars and, owing to his superior strength and tenacity, manages to unite the warring races and rescue a princess. It’s clear the influence this series had from Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers in the 1930s to Star Wars.

    What is most striking is how elaborately Burroughs describes the geography and cultures of Barsoom, the native name for Mars. It reads very much like a travelogue and recounts Carter’s extraordinary adventures across the planet. Despite its advanced science, the people’s of Barsoom spend a great deal of time in violent conflicts. They seem to revel in getting up close and fighting each other with swords. While the plot is straightforward – and 100 years later – almost entirely predictable, it’s Burrough’s world-building that is the attraction for me.

    Bearing in mind the period it was written, what I’ve read of the John Carter series so far gives me the same impression I had when I read the Tarzan books: Carter plays the role of a white saviour (he literally is the only white man on Mars!) who brings peace to the warring red and green races. Equally, Dejah Thoris, the red princess plays a far more passive role than I expected and is little more than a love-interest for Carter who is always in some sort of danger (she’s always presented as an assertive, dynamic character in the Dynamite Comics).

    Even so, I would quite happily recommend A Princess of Mars and The Gods of Mars as companion reads to The First Men in the Moon and Autour de la Lune or even as a gateway into the adventures of pulp heroes like Zorro, Conan the Barbarian, Doc Savage, The Shadow and even Biggles (oh, how my junior school teacher, Mr Lee, encouraged us to read Biggles!).

  • Rosenshine’s Principles in Action

    Rosenshine’s Principles in Action

    Notes from Rosenshine’s Principles in Action (2019) by Tom Sherrington

    This is the first of my notes from three books about Rosenshine’s principles. The two most useful aspects of this book are the way in which Sherrington organises the 10 principles into 4 strands (though he rightly emphasises that the principles overlap) and that they are not a checklist for lesson observations. He insists that each school subject should consider how the principles apply rather than being confined by their imposition.

    • INTRODUCTION
      • Sherrington: “On first reading, I was struck immediately by its brilliant clarity and simplicity and its potential to support teachers seeking to engage with cognitive science and the wider world of education research.”
      • In “Teaching Functions” in 1986 Rosenshine outlines 17 “instructional procedures”.
      • From these procedures, Rosenshine formulates 10 principles.
      • Sherrington found that it helps to condense the ideas to 4 strands when presenting these ideas (to conferences etc):
        • sequencing concepts and modelling
        • questioning
        • reviewing material
        • stages of practice
      • Why are the principles receiving an enthusiastic response?
        • They bridge the research-practice divide.
        • short, easy to read, packed with insights
        • “Schools carry a lot of inertia; teachers’ habits are hard to shift. The punchy simplicity of the principles cuts through a lot of that.”
        • “There’s power in the simple binary descriptor Rosenshine deploys to get his message across: more effective teachers vs less effective teachers.”
      • Trustworthiness
        • Ideas not fads. Rooted in evidence.
        • Rosenshine introduces his pamphlet with a brief overview of the three sources of evidence:
          • cognitive science
          • observational studies of “master teachers”
          • testing cognitive supports and scaffolds that help students learn complex tasks
        • No conflict between the instructional suggestions that come from these sources.
        • “Happily, whilst learning and teaching are undeniably complex, it turns out that they are not that complex: we can formulate a coherent evidence-based model that links theory to practice.”
        • Provides coherence that teachers seek.
      • Authenticity
        • “the paper, taken as whole, sounds to many teachers like common sense. It’s an entirely recognisable set of ideas. There are no gimmicks, no fads, nothing that seems implausible, nothing outlandish.”
        • Feels like a grassroots document.
        • Its ideas a rooted authentically in classroom experience.
        • Uncontentious. “The discussions are not about whether or not to adopt the principles; they are about how to adopt them more fluently, with more intensity or at a higher frequency; they are about how to interpret them through the lens of each subject domain, and how to adapt them for learners with different levels of knowledge and confidence.”
      • “The kiss of death to teacher development is a school culture or accountability framework that motivates ‘speed camera’ behaviours – where teachers turn on the style when they are under scrutiny only to revert to less effective practices the rest of the time.”
      • Theory of Action: What is the Underlying Model?
        • “How do the actions and activities that a teacher engages in – or that they require their students to engage in – lead to learning?”
        • Teachers require a “sound” model of the learning process.
        • Sherrington: “teachers are more likely to connect with ideas and implement them well if they can formulate a mental model of learning that underpins the practice.”
        • Quotes Deans – Practice with Purpose – “Deliberate practice both produces and relies on mental models and mental representations to guide decisions. These models allow practitioners to self-monitor performance to improve their performance.”
        • Sherrington cites ideas from these sources:
          • Daniel Willingham – Why Don’t Students Like School?
          • Graham Nuttal – The Hidden Lives of Learners
          • Arthur Shimamura – MARGE: A Whole-Brain Learning Approach
          • Yana Weinstein and Megan Sumeracki – Understanding How We Learn
          • Robert Bjork, Elizabeth Bjork, John Sweller, Paul Kirschner, Carol Dweck
        • Sherrington gives a simple model for how memory works:
          • “conceptual information” initially enters from our environment into working memory.
          • Working memory is finite and small; we can only absorb a limited amount of information at once.
          • We process information so that it is stored in long-term memory. “This is effectively unlimited.”
          • We organise information into SCHEMATA.
            • New information is only stored if we can connect it to knowledge we already have. Prior knowledge is a major factor in our capacity to learn new information.
            • The more complex and interconnected our schemata are, the easier it is to make sense of new information and organise it to make sense.
            • Sherrington: “The concept of understanding is really ‘memory in disguise’.” (This is drawn from Willingham.)
            • If a schema contains incorrect information (misconception/incomplete model) it can’t easily be overwritten. Has to be unpicked and fully re-learned.
            • We forget information not stored in meaningful schema or not retrieved frequently.
            • Retrieval practice. Sherrington: “If we undertake enough retrieval practice, generating formulations of our memory and evaluating it for accuracy, we gain a degree of fluency and, ultimately, automaticity.”
            • Cognitive load theory: “the more fluent we are with retrieval of stored information, the more capacity we have in our working memory to attend to new information and problem-solving”. (Opposite is true.)
            • “A key implication of this is that novice learners need more practice than more confident, experienced learners.”
          • Instructional teaching: “instructional teaching needs to be highly interactive. We need to gain as much feedback as we can from our students, helping us gauge how well the learning is going so that we can then plan the next steps in our teaching. Learning is hidden, so we need to seek out evidence for it in a dynamic fashion during our lessons.”
          • Need for RESPONSIVE TEACHING.
        • Knowledge-specified Curriculum
          • Notion of a “knowledge-specified” or “structured” curriculum.
          • Quotes Rosenshine and Stevens – Teaching Functions – (1986): “It would be a mistake to claim that the teaching procedures which have emerged from this research apply to all subjects, and all learners, all the time. Rather, these procedures are most applicable for the ‘well-structured’ (Simon, 1973) parts of any content area, and are least applicable to the ‘ill-structured’ parts of any content area.”
          • Sherrington adds: “Evidently, some content needs more teacher-directed instruction and so the subject-specific curriculum context is important.”
          • Sherrington: “This also suggests that the more precise we are about the knowledge goals for learners, the more rigorous we can be about the process of ensuring that all students meet them. This rings true in my experience, having observed thousands of lessons. Very often, when engaging in feedback conversations with teachers, I feel that everyone in the class could have benefited from more precise knowledge goals – both teacher and students. It’s hard to form a strong schema, to practice retrieval, or to evaluate the true extent of our knowledge if you are unsure what the knowledge is meant to be or if you are unsure what exactly ‘success’ looks like.”
    • STRAND 1: SEQUENCING CONCEPTS AND MODELLING
      • 2 – PRESENT NEW MATERIAL USING SMALL STEPS
        • Teachers need to invest time in breaking down curriculum material.
        • Sherrington: “We can’t separate generic instructional methods from curriculum content in practice.”
        • Gives examples from subjects like PE, Dance and Maths.
        • Sherrington: “One common strand of thinking about new material is to break a task down into a set of instructions.”
        • Sherrington: “Another form of sequencing is in moving from the big picture of a subject down to a detailed area of focus and back again. We zoom out to orientate ourselves and then zoom in, ever further, step by step. This helps students to form a clear schema, locating an area of learning in relation to others.”
        • Gives examples from History, Biology and English Literature: “In poetry, in order to engage in a meaningful discussion of the specific meaning of, say, Ted Hughes’s ‘Suddenly, he awoke and was running – raw’ (the opening line from ‘Bayonet Charge’), it’s going to be important to have some prior knowledge about the WWI context, and an understanding of a range of literary language techniques and structures as well as some background about Ted Hughes.”
      • 4 – PROVIDE MODELS
        • Providing models is a central feature of giving good explanations.
        • Models can be:
          • physical representations of completed tasks – exemplars that can be used as scaffolds – eg. model paragraph for opening essay
          • conceptual models
          • explicit narration of our thought processes when thinking through how to solve problems or undertake a creative activity
        • Ways teachers can develop their practice by developing the way they provide models:
          • link abstract ideas to concrete examples (eg. having visual representations to show fractions/chemical reactions).
            • Sherrington: “In English, it’s helpful to know concrete examples of technical grammar structures or features of writing. ‘All of a sudden’ is a fronted adverbial; ‘She glided like a swan’ is a simile; ‘the wind swooshed and swirled around the houses’ includes examples of onomatopoeia and alliteration. Moving to and fro between the abstract and the concrete is important in many aspects of language.”
          • link abstract knowledge to experimental “tacit” knowledge.
            • tacit knowledge is implied, not stated (knowledge not easily verbalised)
            • Quotes Rosenshine: “The most effective teachers ensured that their students efficiently acquired, rehearsed, and connected background knowledge by providing a good deal of instructional support. They provided this support by teaching new material in manageable amounts, modeling, guiding student practice, helping students when they made errors, and providing for sufficient practice and review. Many of these teachers also went on to experiential, hands-on activities, but they always did the experiential activities after, not before, the basic material was learned.”
            • Sherrington: “Rosenshine is firmly saying that some experiential activities are not successful in securing learning unless ‘basic material’ has been learned. Plenty of activities can seed confusion and misconceptions if students don’t know enough about what they’re doing.”
            • Tacit knowledge can constitute essential background or material that has to be learned (eg. a field study preceding technical work).
            • NARRATE THE THOUGHT PROCESS
              • Sherrington: “An important role for teachers is to support students in developing their capacity for metacognition and self-regulation7 by modelling their own thought processes when engaging in a task. Effective teachers will be able to narrate the decisions and choices they make: where to begin with a maths problem; where to start with an essay; how to plan the timing of a 20-minute writing task; how to write in a style appropriate for a certain purpose and audience, making particular choices of words and phrases. By making the implicit explicit, teachers are supporting students to form their own mental models, gaining confidence with the decisions they make.”
            • ORGANISE THE INFORMATION
              • Modelling can help students to organise information into secure, well-structures schemata.
              • Arthur Shiamura – R (Relate) of MARGE theory says that we need to relate new knowledge to what we already know. He suggests the three Cs – compare, contrast, categorise.
              • Sherrington: “An example of this might be to show how certain quotations in Shakespeare’s Macbeth support the view of Macbeth as weak or guilt- ridden whereas others show him to be calculating and driven by ambition. Modelling the use of quotations provides a framework for students to engage in that process themselves.”
              • Formation of relational models will enable students to grasp the ideas and form sound schemata of their own.
            • WORKED EXAMPLES (aka worked-out examples)
              • Rosenshine, John Sweller and others have demonstrated the power of worked examples as an outcome of cognitive load theory.
              • Sherrington: “Effective teachers will tend to provide students with many worked examples so that the general patterns are clear, providing a strong basis from which to learn. The trick is then to gradually reduce the level of completion, leaving students to finish problems off and ultimately do them by themselves.”
              • Rosenshine suggests that less effective teachers tend not to provide enough worked examples, thus adding to cognitive load and leaving students unsure of the procedures and how to apply them,
              • With struggling classes: “show them another example”.
      • 8 – PROVIDE SCAFFOLDS FOR DIFFICULT TASKS
        • Important for students to undergo a form of “cognitive apprenticeship” from a master teacher who models, coaches and supports them.
        • Key is that scaffolds are temporary – support the development of the cognitive process but are withdrawn to avoid reliance.
        • Models can be used as temporary scaffolds.
        • WRITING FRAMES
          • opening sentences
          • paragraph structures (PEE, SQuID, PETAL)
          • Sherrington: “The idea is to teach students how to organise their ideas. For many students, this is critical to their success in developing their knowledge of forms of expression. However, if overused, there is a risk that these paragraphs read as very formulaic, so students need to be weaned off them as they reach higher levels where a greater degree of flair and individuality is expected. The whole point of scaffolding is that, eventually, it has to be taken down!”
        • EXEMPLARS
          • Sherrington:Written success criteria can feel rather dense and difficult to interpret whereas the differences between exemplars of different standards can be much easier to understand. If students are asked for the positive features of an exemplar and ways it can be improved, and then asked to compare their own work to the exemplar, they can often make much better sense of the component elements that contribute to the idea of success.”
        • STRATEGIC THINKING
          • Gives example of labelling to support strudents’ getting “a way into the problem”. Students need to learn that they have the power to make decision to undertake labelling themselves.
          • Sherrington: “Most problem-solving subjects have a relatively small set of archetypal problems. Once students become familiar with them, their cognitive load is greatly reduced with subsequent encounters. In this sense, simply exposing students to multiple examples of the typical problem types scaffolds their capacity for problem-solving.”
        • ANTICIPATE ERRORS AND MISCONCEPTIONS
          • Provide students with checklists of common errors – which they use initially and gradually stop relying on as they internalise the conventions.
          • Also includes misconceptions of ideas (gives Science examples).
    • STRAND 2: QUESTIONING
      • Sherrington: “One of the strongest implications from Rosenshine’s ‘Principles of Instruction’ is that effective questioning lies at the heart of great instructional teaching.”
      • 3 – ASK A LARGE NUMBER OF QUESTIONS AND CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING
        • It is vital we get as much feedback from our students as we can.
        • “more effective teachers ask more questions,involving more students, probing in more depth and taking more time to explain, clarify and check for understanding. In addition, they ask students to explain the process they have used to answer a question – to narrate their thinking. Significantly, ‘less successful teachers ask fewer questions and almost no process questions’.”
        • COLD CALLING
          • All students should be involved in engaging with the teacher-student dialogue.
          • No hands up! Not one-off: it needs to be the default mode for most questions – absolutely routine.
        • NO OPT-OUT
          • Students should get opportunity to gain confidence by consolidating correct or secure answers.
          • Students should not be allowed to form defensive habit of saying “I don’t know” as a get-out.
          • In practice this means going back to the students who made errors to now give the right answer. Also those who say “I don’t know” has no value.
        • SAY IT AGAIN, BETTER
          • In order for students not to give mediocre or half-formed answers, students are given a second opportunity to answer.
          • “Thanks, that’s great. Now let’s say it again better. Try again but make sure you add in X and link it to idea Y.”
        • THINK, PAIR, SHARE
          • In pairs students can think and air their initial thoughts.
          • Give a time-cued task. Follow by cold-calling asking them to report back what their four points were.
        • WHOLE-CLASS RESPONSE
          • Sometimes necessary to get a response from every student at the same time. Provides quick feedback.
          • Use something like whiteboards.
          • Teachers can get good results from tightly-orchestrated choral repetition.
        • PROBING
          • Probing each student’s schema with multiple responsive questions is a powerful mode of questioning and a form of guided practice.
          • Make it the default that you ask 3-5 questions before moving on.
          • Rosenshine provides examples.
      • 6 – CHECK FOR STUDENT UNDERSTANDING
        • CFU – abbrieviation
        • Sherrington: “This appears to be at the centre of the whole process… it’s the core concept in the Principles”.
        • Quotes Rosenshine: “The wrong way to check for understanding is to ask only a few questions, call on volunteers to hear their (usually correct) answers, and thenassume that all of the class either understands or has now learned from hearing the volunteers’ responses. Another error is to ask, ‘Are there any questions?’ and, if there aren’t any, assume that everybody understands. Another error (particularly with older children) is to assume that it is not necessary to check for understanding, and that simply repeating the points will be sufficient.”
        • Sherrington: “If we are going to be sure all students have formed secure understanding, teachers should not assume that knowledge aired and shared in the public space of the classroom has been absorbed and learned by any individual. It’s necessary to check for understanding from students to determine whether they understood what you meant. Do they now have the level of understanding you are aiming at?”
        • HAVE YOU UNDERSTOOD VS. WHAT HAVE YOU UNDERSTOOD
        • Two benefits from checking for understanding:
          • “The teacher gains feedback about which part of the material might need to be revisited, re-taught or given more practice time.”
          • In rehearsing their understanding, students are likely to elaborate on the knowledge in relevant schemata which strengthens connections between different ideas and improves long-term retention.
        • Rosenshine suggests the importance of CFU reinfoces the need to present material in small steps. Too much information introduced at once can introduce errors that get stored in their schemata as learned misconceptions.
        • CFU can be forensic when focusing on “maximising individual success”.
        • Sherrington: “In general, I would advocate placing ‘Checking for understanding” right at the centre of teachers’ thinking during their lessons. It forces us to consider the detail of what we want all students to know and how, exactly, to organise the lesson to maximise the number and the depth of student responses we can engage with.”
    • STRAND 3: REVIEWING MATERIAL
      • Retrieval practice supports building long-term memory and fluency in recall.
      • 1 – DAILY REVIEW
        • Sherrington: “ The significance of daily review is that it allows students to re-activate recently acquired knowledge, reducing cognitive load at the beginning of a lesson that’s designed to build on this knowledge. Students don’t necessarily recall recent learning readily and it pays to anticipate this rather than be frustrated by it. It’s also important for prior learning to be active in our working memory if we’re going to add more layers of complexity to it; the connections we want to engineer won’t happen otherwise.”
        • Gives examples of starting lesson with recall activities vocabulary (multiple choice), quotation recall (cloze) and questions (factual recall).
        • Efrat Furst, cognitive scientist says there is a natural time delay factor that teachers should take account of in their teaching. Students naturally experience short-term confusion and lack of fluency as they encounter new material.
      • 10 – WEEKLY AND MONTHLY REVIEW
        • Sherrington: “One main purpose of weekly and monthly review is to ensure that previously learned material is not forgotten – to attenuate the natural rate of forgetting. It is also to ensure that, through frequent revisiting of a range of material, students are able to form ever more well-connected networks of ideas – more extensive schemata. This form of practice helps students to learn more information and makes it easier to be successful with problem-solving as less space in short-term memory is needed.”
        • More effective teachers routinely engage students in a variety of forms of retrieval practice.
        • STUDY NOTES – THEN COMPLETE BLANKED PARTS WEEK AFTER
          • Where students have more fluent recall of basic facts they have more space in working memory to attend to applying the knowledge to explain deeper questions.
        • USE MEMORY-BUILDING POWER OF NARRATIVE STRUCTURES
          • eg. tell the story of a water molecule, using correct terminology
          • students then (individually or in pairs) engage in elaborative-interrogative questioning (eg. “How/Why does this happen?”).
          • Elaborative-Interrogative questioning has strong effect on future retention as it forces us to form more coherent schemata.
        • GENERATE AND EVALUATE VERSIONS OF MEMORY
          • Shimamura explains in G and E of MARGE (Generate and Evaluate) we can easily think we’ve learned something is information is continually presented to us.
          • Gives example of trying to generate a timeline of Henry VIII’s wives from memory (re-studying material until he could do it from memory).
          • Sherrington: “More generally, the idea that learning is a generative process is important. Daily, weekly and monthly review activities give students opportunities to generate versions of what they know and understand, helping to strengthen future retrieval of the knowledge involved, build fluency, and identify where they might have residual gaps or areas of uncertainty.”
        • To make daily, weekly and monthly review part of an effective and sustainable routine, Sherrington advises:
          • involve everyone
          • make checking accurate and easy (not mark schemes)
          • specify the knowledge
          • keep it generative (“it means closing the books and making students think for themselves”)
          • vary the diet (mix up teacher-led, self-quizzing, written and verbal quizzing, self-explanation, “telling the story”, multiple-choice and open-response tests, rehearsing explanations, summarising, creating knowledge maps, demonstration and performance of learned techniques, routines and procedures)
          • make it time efficient (not dominating the lesson)
          • make it workload efficient (students should mostly do it themselves)
    • STRAND 4: STAGES OF PRACTICE
      • Sherrington: “As a profession, we have been through a period where ideas such as rote learning, repetition or drill have been disparaged and scoffed at as old-fashioned – even characterised as being against the spirit of great learning. But once you de-demonise these ideas, reconstituting them simply as ‘practice’, they seem entirely sensible as part of a sound learning process. Nobody ever excels at anything without lots of practice and that starts with the way we conduct our lessons.”
      • 5 – GUIDE STUDENT PRACTICE
        • Rosenshine suggests that the most effective teachers gave more time for guided practice.
        • Quotes Rosenshine: “An important finding from information-processing research is that students need to spend additional time rephrasing, elaborating, and summarizing new material in order to store this material in their long-term memory.”
        • Guidance is key to generating high success rates that fuels movation and engagement during more independent work.
        • Less confident learners have less prior knowledge and more important guided practice is.
        • GUIDED PRACTICE “is typically where learning activities involve thorough explanations, high-frequency, short-answer questions or simple tasks where the teacher and students are engaged interactively, with plenty of modelling, corrective or affirming feedback and aspects of re-teaching where gaps remain.”
        • If students are involved in “seatwork” the teacher should be circulating and checking work for early errors or successes.
        • Asking questions and CFU are forms of guided practice.
        • Choral repetition (eg. uses fronted adverbials – students less likely to use phrases independently if they have not had a chance to practise them first; number bonds to 100).
        • Ensure that the practice is focused (not too much at one time).
      • 7 – OBTAIN A HIGH SUCCESS RATE
        • Teachers need to set questions that give about 80% success (70% too low). If students are getting too much wrong then they are effectively practising making errors.
        • Quotes Rosenshine: “If their success rate is too low, we may need to go back: to re-teach, re-explain, re-model; to return to more secure ground and build back up again, perhaps trying different approaches. We then need to give students more guided practice at a strategy that allows them to reach the nominal 80% threshold. Nothing new, just more practice. If their success is much higher than 80%, it suggests they are ready for more challenge. We need to add levels of depth in the knowledge requirements in the task, to set more difficult problems, to require deeper explanations, to remove some of the scaffolds and supports.”
        • Sherrington thinks this is unrealistic in a mixed-attainment class. 80% should be an overarching benchmark. Approach 100% on a knowledge test by the conclusion of a topic.
      • 9 – INDEPENDENT PRACTICE
        • Sherrington: “In many ways, this is the ultimate goal for teaching: to construct learning so that students are able to do challenging things by themselves without help.”
        • Less effective teachers cut guided practice but also do not provide enough opportunity for independent practice.
        • Basic flow of learning experiences:
          • Teacher explains.
          • Teacher models.
          • Teacher checks for understanding.
          • Student engages in guided practice with scaffolding as needed.
          • Scaffolding and support are gradually withdrawn.
          • Student engages in independent practice.
          • Student become fluent.
        • Simpler version: “I do it; we do it; you do it: I.”
        • “Cooperative learning” – eg. students working in pairs on communicating mental model of a process (one with notes, one without).
        • Sherrington: “An essential feature of independent practice is that students draw on their own resources. This is where they have to rely on recall from memory, building fluency through repeatedly engaging in processes that reinforce connections and retrieval pathways, generating their own feedback and setting their own goals for improvement. The teacher’s role is to provide students with the tools they need to do this, including teaching them explicit strategies for checking their own work against a set of standards in a form they can understand, using exemplars, mark schemes and so on.”
    • CONCLUSION
      • Sherrington says that while the principles overlap, it’s worth considering each strand one by one.
      • Important for teachers to ask “How WELL do we do” each strand.
      • It’s unrealistic and unhelpful to work on each of these improvement agendas simultaneously.
      • Sherrington: “ it would not be reasonable or sensible to expect to see each of these principles being modelled during any given one-off lesson observation. Please, please, please do not corrupt the spirit and intent of ‘Principles of Instruction’ by turning it into a lesson-by-lesson checklist. Use it to lift people up, not to tie them down!”
      • Sherrington: “it would be a mistake to seek to impose a ‘Principles of Instruction’ formula of some kind into areas that it does not belong. For each subject domain, teachers should consider how the principles or the four strands apply. There is always knowledge; there is always practice; there is always a role for checking for understanding – but the way these things take form varies significantly from physics to Spanish to history to art to drama to maths and to science. Let’s celebrate that variety and not seek to confine it.”