Episode 201: Is the emphasis on learning added extras and jargon terms having a negative impact on learners?

We're back. The School of School podcast is back. It's how long it's been away. I don't think we have been away, but it's just how I start. Andy, Robin, I don't know if you've been away. You've been away? You're back. You're here now anyway. I can see you. I can see you. How you doing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're back.

I'm back.

We've caught up reasonably recently and we've been going around schools and we've had a number of conversations about observations, thoughts, we've had time to reflect on visiting schools, talking to children, teachers, all sorts of things. One of the things that we noticed and we've mentioned it sort of briefly in a podcast, but I think it warrants more unpicking is some of these elements that are becoming more more regular in maths lessons. And so what we're talking about is if you like the main body of the lesson, you know, here's one mathematical idea.

which I think we're firmly in the camp of that's probably just enough, one idea is enough for children to deal with. And then we talked about that sort of retrieval practice, that memorization practice, those sorts of things. But the other thing that we've noticed is these sort of language lists and often they're very technical language that are introduced and shown to the children. And if you were to walk in and you were looking at what's being shown as here's the prompt for today's lesson, they take quite a prominent space. And I know we've talked about this, but I'm going to throw it open and say, helpful, hindrance, what do you think? You're in the class, you're looking at these things happening, what are the considerations?

We throw all kinds of kind of half-baked ideas into lessons sometimes because of external pressure or something that some comment that somebody made or kind of maybe an official document that's come out of an association of important people that should know better.

or maybe even the government that encourage us or maybe kind of tell us that we should be paying more attention to something like vocabulary for instance, right? It's important for children to know vocabulary. In maths, I would say that at some point it's important for children to understand the vocabulary, but usually not when they're learning the topic. Actually, almost certainly not when they're learning the topic.

Because, because it's just jargon, right? And if someone gets a misconception with the jargon, you're, you're, it's a lot harder to change and fix later. Once someone has embedded a misconception very, very strongly and usually associated with jargon. So.

So what's the benefit? Like why? are we, we're not expecting any of these children to write math vocabulary books, right? None of them, you know, it's important for maybe people who write dictionaries or, know, but I don't really know, like, I don't really know that it's all that important to know what the divisor is in a mathematical problem.

Well, let's say that the motivation, I would suggest that the answer that you'd probably get there in an attempt to validate this practice would be to say, perhaps in a statutory test at year six, they may need to know this terminology because it may be something like, find the question. Okay, just let that sit there for the moment, right? To me, that doesn't warrant five years, six years, however long.

of technical language to start with. I think about, Andy, you love your music, and I bet you there's some phrases. I might put you on the spot. This might go disastrously wrong. But can you think of like a musical phrase that most people wouldn't use? Is there any music phraseology that might be like a...

yeah, sure. So, so modes, right? Like, you know, are you playing Aeolian or Mixolydian or Ionian? Right?

Right. Stop, stop, stop. This is perfect. Right. OK. So this is good news. Now, what tends to happen in something like this is we will get to a point where Andy will say something like, I can predict what's going to happen. You'll start explaining it. And at some point, everything in you will say, listen, let me just pick up my guitar. OK. Let me pick up my guitar and I'll show you. And we'll do everything because we've realized that starting by trying to talk to these words is ridiculous.

It is utterly ridiculous because if you did whatever these things were musically and you started to go, do you know that sounds like a bit of a pattern there Andy, I can hear that this or that or however it transpires. You learn and you learn and you learn and at the point where you can recognize it in the heartbeat, you can do it yourself, you can do all of those things. go, do you know what, there's a word to describe that. Go on, what is it? It's this, thanks. And that's it. That's the transaction. Other than that..

Exactly.

It's nightmare and how many people are going to lose on the way? It's just a disaster. No, of course it does.

And the label doesn't matter, right? That's the whole point. The label doesn't matter. Like knowing that, knowing that, I don't know, just pick some random and I, you know, I'm going to make some mistakes here because my knowledge is not that profound in music theory, but let's just say it's like, you know, you're playing in, you know, if you play a major scale and you flatten the seventh note, right? Then that's this mode. It's a different mode.

Right? So that's the idea of a mode. Why is that a mode? Well, it's got to do with the way the major scale is. I don't if you move things around, blah, blah, blah, whatever. I give you really complicated explanation why it's a mode and how you can calculate it and so on and so forth. And by the way, the mode is called this. None of that. None of that. Absolutely nothing of that helps you in any kind of way to either make music or appreciate it. Right? Like, absolutely.

No, and it actually, yeah, it's probably a turnoff, if anything. If I'm asking Andy to show me how to play a few chords on the guitar and he starts going into all of this jargon that I don't know. Yeah, I'd be like.

Yeah, exactly.

Wouldn't it make your heart sing, Robin, if your music teacher tells you that?

Yeah, exactly. if you play an E major instead of an E minor, that's a borrowed chord because blotty, blotty, blotty, this, that, and the other thing. Who cares? It's like, it doesn't really matter at all. It's just a convenience that we gave these things.

Yeah!

labels for people who are operating at a very high level can take a shortcut and say, yeah, just play Mixolydian instead of saying play like Carlos Santana or play like, you know, so on and so forth, right? They just say like, that's just a technical term for technocrats who are

You know, a shorthand, right, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter in any kind of way. It's just that, but the point is it doesn't help you in any kind of way to know what the modes are or

Unless you're operating at that level. You got to call someone in the studio in Los Angeles, say, just do the solo in a Mixolydian mode. okay. I'm a professional studio musician. I know what that means. I can do that. But you could have just also just to said, play like Carlos Santana and he would have done that as well. Right. Yeah.

And the thing is, it's that understanding, isn't it? That's the difference is that if you're trying to talk to a word, particularly a technical word, it is just, I don't think people, I think people underestimate one, just how difficult it is to understand, two, how difficult it is to take people with you, and three, how flawed it is as an approach. Here's the technical term and we're gonna learn from that. No, we're not. We're gonna learn, I know.

My brain's failing me. We were talking about division on this one of the last podcast, but those technical terms, you need to know what the division is and to start with. Don't forget the other stuff. Just understand the maths bit.

But also all that stuff has traps in it, right? So if we use our music analogy again, if you play two chords, right? And the two chords are like A minor and E, okay? What key are you in? Well, you don't know because you could be in all kinds of different keys. So.

then the modes start becoming important because they will imply a key. Okay, but like this is way more complicated than any, you know, cause nobody talks about it. Like it's just the one, I want my song to sound like that. And you know, your vocabulary, you're fluent with the instrument because you play it and you know, when you play these notes in this context, sounds like what it's called doesn't matter at all.

You just know like, it's this kind of song. want it to be a sad song. want it to be a happy song, whatever it is you're going to play to the intent, right? Maths is exactly like that as well. So bringing it back to vocabulary and you know, we talked about sharing and grouping, right? Well, if you're sharing and you're grouping, right? Well, you've got three numbers. What are they called? There's the, I don't even know what they are for sure. One is the quotient. That's the call it the answer, right? You got the divisor.

Dividend and devise it. Dividend.

And what's the other one called? The dividend. Okay. So in sharing, which is the dividend, which is the divisor, and are they the same when you do grouping? So if I say make groups of seven or I say make seven equal groups, right?

we need pictorial help here. This is what ends up happening.

Yes.

Right. So.

Yeah. And that did come up. That came up in, one of our school visits. I don't know if it was a year or four or year five. Yeah. They specifically asked what is, I don't know if it was the divisor, but they asked what it's called. I, know, these kids were on it. They had been, you know, this class was, was really, knowledgeable, but ask them what the vocab was on it. And you could see stunned looks and.

confusion and dear, now what are you talking about? Amongst the group.

Yeah. Well, so if you take the example, right? So like, say 27 make nine equal groups or make groups of nine. Okay. Are you going to end up with the same thing? No, you're going to end up with two different physical things. Okay. What's the divisor?

in both of those. Is it the same number?

It's the context of the question that defines it.

That's right.

Yeah, so you're taking 27 and you're dividing it by 9 in both instances? And the answer is 3. Right. But in one, yeah, exactly. So the divisor is 9 in both instances, right? But the result for one is 9 groups of 3 objects. And for the other one, it's 3 groups of 9 objects. It's not even the, like,

Because that's either the group size or the number of groups. So yeah, in the abstract it behaves the same.

They're not the same answer. So like, isn't that, isn't that fricking hard enough to conceive that, that you write nine groups, 27 divided by nine could be three groups of nine or nine groups of three. And both of them are correct. Okay. Isn't that hard enough to wrap your head around without even thinking about

what every single one of those numbers is called in that instance. And that's the thing. And you know what? You could write another division equation.

which is 27 divided by 3 and get the same two answers, the exact same two answers, but it's a different equation. But the divisor is different. How does that work? And the quotient's different.

Yeah.

Yeah, the whole thing, like you're saying, it's so, yeah. And that's why we need like seven years from reception to year six to develop a really good sense of it, right? So why throw stuff in the mix when you're just starting out? Like if I came to you and said, Andy, teach me how to play the guitar and you start going on about modes or whatever, I'm just going, mate, I'm not coming back. But the kids don't have a choice.

So what happened, what happened, okay, because this intrigued me, because this is the lesson we observed. What happened is there were in the workbook, there were three questions. The first one was one that was based on sharing. The second one was based on grouping. Okay, grouping is the more complicated, okay, that they every single, so four classrooms, four teachers.

About 120 children. Okay. One hour lesson. How many do you think got that second question right?

I went into all four classrooms.

I only saw one child who got it right.

Okay. So is that not hard enough? Is it not difficult enough? If out of 120 children and four teachers, only one child got it right in the workbook, independent practice, is that not a difficult enough topic that it deserves a hundred percent attention and doesn't need to be kind of, distracted with vocabulary?

100%. And I think this is true. I mean, that particular example. yeah. Yeah.

And these are good teachers and this is an amazing school, right? This is an amazing school. By the way,

That's right. It's an amazing school. This is like an outstanding school.

But I think it comes back to that just one key idea for any of these ideas is enough. Just one. And that's that layering that becomes, and the part that worries me the most about this is that that then becomes the model, this is what good teaching looks like. Because they're great teachers. They're doing a really good job. The maths is being done well and all those sorts of things. But it sort of comes in and it becomes, this is the model of good

of what good teaching looks like and it worries me because as we've pointed out, it makes the job for everyone, the children and the teachers, harder.

Hmm. That's right. So what's the lesson? The lesson is don't do that stuff because it's not helping anybody and it's not going to help them on the test because they might still get it wrong. Right. Because you don't understand it anyway. And the teachers probably haven't thought about it that deeply because why would they? They just got to get through the day. Right. So but it's a complicated topic. You know, we did our best efforts to make sure that those lessons cover everything that teaches that topic carefully.

spend some time, slow down and try to understand what it is that the children need to learn by the end of the day and focus on that and don't focus on, don't throw in more stuff because you're not helping anybody. You're actually making it less likely that they're going to succeed. And I think that that just should make common sense to most people. So the question to me is why do these, whoever these outside influencers that are encouraging people to try to do too much in a lesson,

Who are they and why are they doing it?

I think there's two parts to it. think there's one part where something gets said. like retrieval practice or language, pick one of it like oracy. Often this language will get lumped into oracy and oracy is talked about all the time now. It's discussing and reasoning, right? That's always been there. So it gets repackaged. These things get repackaged.

High profile what we'll start to talk about RSA, but the time that's needed to go all right What does that actually mean and am I already doing it? Because it's that part there that makes you go stop. Am I doing it in my classroom already? Yes, do I need to change my practice? No fine as we were as we were, but what I'm doing is already Really high quality teacher and it covers what however it's labeled retrieval practice developing fluency

Stop, is it already happening in my classroom? Yes, I'm asking my children to attend to these spot patterns, to all these sorts of things. Do I need to change anything? Do I need to chuck anything out at beginning of the classroom? No, okay, as you were. But that stop part, and I think school leadership as well. School leaders will read this sort of stuff and go, right, I get this all the time. In training, with teachers, say to me, hey Adam, do we have to put this in at the beginning of the lesson? And I'll go through all of the things that we've already discussed. Well, why would you? Like, tell me how it benefits the children's learning and then.

If it does more than just the lesson itself, then it's justifiable. But if you can't justify it, then no, clearly not. It's kind of that simple. But often people are being told, we have to do this because school leaders will think, I've read this in the latest whatever, or I saw this, someone's posted this and everyone's looking at RSC. We need to do some RSC. everyone's doing this retrieval practice. We need to do some retrieval practice or we'll get left behind.

Yeah. It's the trend.

And I think often teachers, they don't feel like they have a choice. And it's really concerning because these are, I keep going on and training about time being the single, it's the resource that we can never give back. It's the most precious resource. You know, the time that it takes to, you you've already talked about that with the vision, but you can apply that to anything. It takes time. And if you don't, if you have less of it, you can't do it as well. It's not, that's just basic. It's basic.

And it's those things that every time something good idea gets thrown in the mix, okay, but you can't make the school day any longer. These kids aren't going to get another shot at today. This is it. This is what they've got.

Yeah. Absolutely