Christopher Such

Experienced primary teacher, school leader and author.

Feel free to DM if you are looking for professional development relating to reading.

[Christopher Such @Suchmo83]

I've made a blog-post where all the resources I've shared - from science curriculum documents to tier two vocabulary lists - can be downloaded. Help yourself! https://t.co/ul2t6kgoZb

[Christopher Such @Suchmo83]

@WritingRocks_17 Thanks!

[Christopher Such @Suchmo83]

@WritingRocks_17 These ones perhaps?

[#WritingRocks✍️😍☺️ writingrocks.bsky.social @WritingRocks_17]

@Suchmo83 Not wrong to ask! A few that measure spelling in children's own writing: Berninger et al. (2002); Graham, Harris & Adkins (2018); Alves et al. (2016); Graham & Santangelo (2014) meta-analysis reports a separate effect for “spelling in writing”…

[Christopher Such @Suchmo83]

@WritingRocks_17 I'd be fascinated to see how an effect size can be calculated for outcomes as difficult to measure as improvemwnt in spelling in children's own writing. Is there a paper (or some) that you would recommend where I can see how this is measured and quantified?

[Christopher Such @Suchmo83]

@WritingRocks_17 I might be wrong about this.

Are there studies you can think of that systematically quantify differences in outcomes of a spelling intervention based on children's own writing rather than more readily measurable outcomes?

[Christopher Such @Suchmo83]

@WritingRocks_17 And if this the bar, I would imagine that the teaching of morphology, orthographic patterns, etc have not cleared it, and all recommendations relating to spelling become moot.

[Christopher Such @Suchmo83]

@WritingRocks_17 I'd argue that if a pupil has improved in their ability to accurately write down a word when it is said aloud to them, this is a pretty strong test of improvement.

And was the presence of dictation isolated as the only meaningful variae in Berninger (2000)?

[Christopher Such @Suchmo83]

@WritingRocks_17 I guess one could just wait for children to use the word in their own writing, but this seems a very unsystematic way to test whether children have improved an an area.

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[Christopher Such @Suchmo83]

@WritingRocks_17 With regards to Alves (2016), is it one of these two studies? I'd like to read more.

[Christopher Such @Suchmo83]

@WritingRocks_17 In Alves (2016), where there was improvement in the dictated words, was it the case that these same words were then not spelled correctly in children's own writing? Or does transfer have to apply to other words not practised to count as transfer?

[Christopher Such @Suchmo83]

@WritingRocks_17 The same underlying principle of isolating and practising elements of writing is at play with oral composition.

By the same reasoning, would you argue that oral composition only makes children better at oral composition?

If not, why not?

[Christopher Such @Suchmo83]

@WritingRocks_17 This seems like a bold claim to me.

Could you perhaps elaborate on why practising handwriting and application of developing orthographic knowledge to spelling would *not* support these elements of writing?

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[Jon Hutchinson @jon_hutchinson_]

How do you develop great school leaders who have the knowledge, ambition and network to eradicate the disadvantage gap across a region?

We think you do it as a team.

East 100 as a programme for aspiring headteachers across the east of England.

[Jon Hutchinson @jon_hutchinson_]

Demonstrating a lack of competence publicly is something that we all avoid.

But we ask kids to do this every day in school. And we should. It’s an inevitable part of learning hard stuff.

That’s one of the reasons I think belonging is so important.

Preorder the book today!

[Daisy Christodoulou @daisychristo]

There's been a lot of talk in the last few weeks in edu circles about whether the trad education movement has failed, what it needs to do next, etc.

This article is just the latest in a succession of examples that shows how us edu-trads have not been nearly as successful as we hoped in altering elite consensus on education.

We have obviously seen with all the Labour party policies that we completely failed to convince Labour.

But actually, it's not like we've really convinced the Conservatives either. This is Dan Hannan, major figure in Brexit, major figure in Conservative politics, presumably has some idea of who Michael Gove is - and here he is in the Telegraph confidently asserting that we no longer need to know things because we can look things up.

(The ironies in this piece abound, by the way. He argues for lessons in spotting bad bogus arguments at the same time as building an article around the argument that memory doesn't matter any more. He argues that "identifying improbable claims" is a generic skill that can be taught in the abstract, at the same time as claiming that handwriting and geography are obsolete. He says that you can always just look up what you need, whilst signally failing to look up any of the evidence on the role of long-term memory...I could go on.)

I wrote a few weeks ago that there was some evidence journalists at the Financial Times were waking up to all the evidence on cognitive science, its implications for schools, the international test evidence.

But the elite understanding of this is a very thin layer, absolutely skin deep.

The mass of second-hand dealers in ideas are still distilling their frenzy from Romantic pedagogy.

Depressing. I honestly don't know what else we can do.

We wrote the books. We had the debates. We built the schools. We aced the tests.

And then it turned out nobody cared.

Right now it is definitely a bleak time to be a trad. It feels like we are on Athelney Marshes, beset by vandals without and dissension within.

BUT we have to keep the faith. Reality is an undefeated champion. Despair is a sin! What we do works!

It may well be that for now, the New World with all its power & might etc., is going to have to step in to save our bacon for a bit. Maybe the momentum is shifting to @ehanford and Sold a Story, @rastokke and Chalk & Talk, @jettybe3 , etc.

We have got to dig in. As Declan Rice said, it's not done!

[Jon Hutchinson @jon_hutchinson_]

Is it ok to plan a unit of lessons without any objectives?

We’ve got opinions on that, and much more.

Check out They Behave For Me whenever you get your podcasts so Adam stops texting me to tell me that the listener numbers are down because of me.