The International Schools Review Forum

I have started work at a school that insists that objectives and three level success criteria are written on the board most, is not all, of the time. Is this peculiar to the curriculum I'm working with or is a common occurrence in international schools? How about in IB/PYP and schools that practice inquiry? Thanks in advance.

Sounds very British to me.

Its not required or a mandated part of IB or PYP, nor any other of the most common IE curriculum (US NC, UK NC, IB, AP, IGCSE), and its not a common practice in IE in general. It was a pop.ed fad about a decade ago.

For the record, there is no US National Curriculum. But otherwise I agree with PsyGuy. It's a thing your admin wants because they think it looks good and because they don't trust you to have something in place. But a good teacher should have those things built into unit and activity plans, so hopefully this isn't too onerous. Annoying, but ultimately no biggie.

@Thames Pirate is incorrect for the correct record there is a US NC.

PG - Common Core is common, but is NOT a National Curriculum. You can argue all you want, but Texas Curriculum is very different than NY curriculum, blowing your assertion of a national curriculum out of the water. Noah and the bible are not in science class or social studies class in NY, but elements are in TX.

HI IAMBOG!

That is SO British a thing to do. It is definitely NOT PYP or MYP, although good teachers do signpost their lessons on the board each class :-)

Yes - same here a very British run school.
And objectives MUST come before introducing new vocabulary.
The only possible thing that can come before objectives clearly written on the board is the starter.
And homework must be logged into the planner BEFORE the plenary!

Top - down fucking Brits!

OK - so I don't have them on the board all the time, just at the start of the lesson. I don't insist that they are copied down, but this is pretty common in lower school / primary so most Y7s are well in the habit of it.

It fits a system where the class has to move fast - the benefit should be that students know what they are covering and know what they are supposed to have achieved at the end of the lesson. The downfall is that quite often even teachers who know how to use these don't do it properly and the success criteria in particular are at best vague enough to be worthless (and no, not all of mine are perfect, I know.)

For those who don't use these - and I'm not being sarcastic, I genuinely am interested to know - how do your students know both what they are doing and how they know they've been successful in it? I suspect in one way we all use learning objectives / intentions & success criteria, we just call them different things (lesson title, examples of what an A looks like, etc...)

Doctor wrote:
> Yes - same here a very British run school.
> And objectives MUST come before introducing new vocabulary.
> The only possible thing that can come before objectives clearly written on
> the board is the starter.
> And homework must be logged into the planner BEFORE the plenary!
>
> Top - down fucking Brits!

Not top-down - more likely smacks of someone who thinks they know how to do this but actually doesn't. Part of my training in Scotland was a fairly long piece of work on the structure of a lesson and how to make these things work properly - I don't get it right all the time, I admit, but since moving internationally I have been stunned by the number of English trained teachers who get it so horribly wrong that the kids become confused.

The point about homework in the planner, though, I can see some sense in - some kids take the plenary to be the key to pack up and miss the homework. That said though, homework can be part of the plenary - but only if the homework has a point to it (so much of it doesn't.)

I like doing the vocabulary before the objectives and right after the starter because it keeps students active just that much longer. Stating objectives and introducing new material is when too much teacher-talk creeps into the lesson. I try to avoid that for as long as possible.

As far as plenary then log HW or log HW then plenary - I think logging hw first just breaks the natural flow.

Anyway, the yearly dog and pony show went well enough.

My experience has been that a lot of UK trained ITs left DE for exactly the reason that the prescribed way of organizing and delivering a lesson wasnt a good fit for them and thats why they do it "so wrong".

@SJ

The CC standards are focused on numeracy and literacy, NexGen adds science

Yes, it is, why isnt it a NC, because of some arbitrary and wholly owned opinion of yours that because the US NC, isnt identical, or equivalent or doesnt measure to the same standards and expectations another NC such as the UK NC demonstrates? Does F=W/A is that different between NY and TX. Are integers different between NY and TX? What the US has is a NATIONAL CURRICULUM that is supplemented by a local and regional curriculum.

PsyGuy wrote:
> My experience has been that a lot of UK trained ITs left DE for exactly the reason
> that the prescribed way of organizing and delivering a lesson wasnt a good fit
> for them and thats why they do it "so wrong".

I'm talking more about learning objectives that don't bear much relationship to the lesson being taught, or success criteria which are so vague that they provide no guidance to students.

PsyGuy wrote:

> Yes, it is, why isnt it a NC,



It's not because it is not a curriculum. It's a set of standards. Those are different things. Furthermore, it is not national.

@psyguy - there is no UK National Curriculum. There is the English National Curriculum, the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence, the National Curriculum for Wales and the Northern Ireland Curriculum.