L&T Blog T2 Week 3: Boys Perceptions of Andrew Tate

 Dear WA,

I hope everyone is well! This week I was interested to read some recent survey research conducted by YouGov on boys’ views about Andrew Tate. This is something that I know many people have raised concerns about, and led to some of our YCs taking on some training last year and then disseminating this to all staff.

Objectives: To understand the current landscape of boys’ views about Andrew Tate.

Summary: 

The headline findings are that 1 in 6 boys between the ages of 6-15 have a positive view of Andrew Tate, but that twice as many in the same age group have a negative view.
The study suggests that boys believe that Tate’s views on women are less appealing than his views on work, success and masculinity.

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• What have I noticed about the views of Andrew Tate amongst my students recently?

• What concerns me?

• What sorts of strategies are helpful in working with our boys about this? 

• To what extent does our Personal Development/RSHE curriculum help to re-shape these views?

• What further support do I need?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks, Jaya

L&T Blog T2 Week 2: Scaffolding - improving our adaptive classrooms!

 

Dear WA,

I hope everyone is well! This week I was interested to read about the recent evidence for differentiation and adaptive teaching in an article by Edutopia. This is very much linked to our ongoing work on making learning personalised and student-centred. 

Objectives: To suggest evidence-based strategies for differentiation and adaptive teaching.

Summary: The article outline a number of scaffolding strategies that can be used to support student understanding as follows:

• Checking your resources: Making resources as clear and as concise as possible. The meaningful and judicious use of highlighting, underlining and arrows can all be used to better support retention of knowledge. The author also suggests asking students ‘Are my lessons and assignments clear?’ to gain valuable feedback about this.
• Building up relevant prior knowledge: Neuroscientific research has demonstrated that the brains seek to make connections with previously taught material. As such, giving students opportunities to retrieve or reactive prior knowledge before moving forward is very important from a scaffolding perspective.
• Offer multimodal materials: Pairing teacher instruction with visuals, videos, role play opportunities and diagrams has a significant impact on the ability to retain information.
• Use of graphic organisers: Making a summary visual representation of complex ideas is likely to support student understanding and retention. 
• Use ‘pre-testing’: Giving students a ‘pre-test’ can help students organise thoughts and enhance curiosity to get to the ‘correct answer’ when they actually learn the material. 
• Use of metacognitive questioning: When giving students something new, encouraging them to ask ‘What parts are familiar to me? What parts are new?’ and ‘How does this connect to what I already know?’ is likely to provide a help scaffold.

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

• Which of these strategies am I currently using? How are they working out? How do I know?
• Which would I like to incorporate into my practice? What support will I need to do this?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks, Jaya

L&T Blog T2 Week 1: Parental attitudes towards attendance

 

Dear WA,

I hope everyone is well and that you had a restful half term break! A key focus for us, and for schools nationally, is to improve attendance to school. As such, a recent report about parental attitudes towards attendance by Public First was an interesting read. 

Objectives: To understand parental attitudes towards school attendance and how they may have changed.

Summary: 
The research has the following key findings:

• Covid has caused a significant shift in parental attitudes towards attendance to school.
• Parents no longer believe that it is important for their children to be in school every day.
• Schools and parents are communicating less effectively across the socioeconomic spectrum.
• Parents perceive school attendance systems as draconian, and as not based on robust information. This erodes trust further between parents and schools.
• Mental health issues and the cost of living crisis are compounding issues with attendance to school. 
• Despite popular perceptions, the increasing frequency of parents working from home is not driving the issues with attendance to school

How does this impact me and my practice?: Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are: 

What does this mean for the students I work with in my classes and tutor group?
How do I communicate about attendance with parents?
What might schools do differently to combat some of the shifts in parental attitudes about attendance?

Please do get in touch if you would like to talk further about this - I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks, Jaya