{"id":21634,"date":"2013-09-17T22:07:26","date_gmt":"2013-09-17T22:07:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wp\/?p=21634"},"modified":"2013-09-17T22:07:26","modified_gmt":"2013-09-17T22:07:26","slug":"day-260-discrete-subjects-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/2013\/09\/17\/day-260-discrete-subjects-or-not\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 260: Discrete Subjects Or Not?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, in the first official time given to me as an ICT subject leader, I had the morning our of class. Now, the majority of time was spent on paperwork – the changes in curriculum<\/a> for next year have huge implications. Curriculum changes have been a constant topic of conversation over the last few years and it’s going to get worse!<\/p>\n

I’ve come to the opinion that the trend towards Topic based teaching<\/a> again has been detrimental to some other subjects. It is almost inevitable that something gets squeezed – I know I don’t treat all subjects as equally as I ought to, for instance. However, it appears that discrete teaching of ICT skills has been one of those things that has fallen by the wayside.<\/p>\n

I had the opportunity to interview children in the time this morning and this has lead me towards that conclusion. It appears that most of the time ICT is used as a treat. It is for playing games – I don’t think there was a single child who didn’t mention games of the 20 I spoke to (four from each year group, 2 to 6). Some children even went as far to say that adults only use computers to work and never play games on them. I wonder when that transition starts because I play games all the time on my ICT devices!<\/p>\n

So, there is the argument that discrete teaching of subjects is better for children as they then have an idea of what lesson is taught when. Mind you, even when I did explicitly state that my class were being taught ICT last year – and they were skills based lessons – they couldn’t recall that when speaking to them today…<\/p>\n

I also realise that it will come as a surprise to many people that my thoughts are heading towards September 2014 already. I know we are only three weeks in to the academic year<\/a>, but I am only likely to get another two or three opportunities in school time to spend on planning and arranging things for then. Every second of that time needs to count.<\/p>\n

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