I had a meeting today about improving my KS3 Schemes of Work with our LA advisor.
I read a wonderful passage in my new book 'Managing Mathematics' about the distinction between SYLLABUS and CURRICULUM.
It explains syllabus the be the list of content to be covered, whilst curriculum is the whole mathematical experience of the child.
I need to adopt this approach. I need to consider the experience of the child when adding to, and developing further, my KS3 Schemes of Work. They need to support all members of staff in their planning, no matter what stage of their career they are at.
Our department has the whole breadth of experience, from those about to start a PGCE, to those nearing retirement. I need to consider this in my development.
I have already written the 'syllabus'. The list of content is there, with some tentative teaching hours allocated (the dept. consider the hours absolute, but in reality, I just put in how long I thought they should take, with little consideration for the number of teaching hours in a year). There's also a tiny amount of suggested material, but nothing 'good', in the OfSTED sense of the word.
But in order to create the 'experience', I need so much more. I need rich activity, suggested teaching models, useful links, hooks, probing questions, assessment opportunities, etc.
I've planned to put aside some of my weekend to work on them - little and often may be the way to go for me - otherwise little will get done. On that note, I'm reminded of a quote I read today about never starting with an empty page. The implication is, leave a task unfinished when you are on a roll, so you have something to go back to next time, rather than complete the part of the task you are working on, then have to start the next part of the task from the beginning.
I'm not sure if I agree - I like to complete one task, so I can start afresh on the next.
(I've just found it - it was a tweet by @timharford, quoting others linking to a website quoting Roald Dahl quoting Hemingway!)
No comments:
Post a Comment