Part One of Two I am increasingly convinced that social anthropology is a useful discipline in the primary school. For pupils, this approach – which seeks deep understanding of culture without an ethnocentric lens – could enable them to develop criticality and analysis, whilst building their worldliness and appreciation of difference. For teachers, it can […]
Read more "Social Anthropology in the Primary Classroom"“Of all the Mammalia yet known it seems the most extraordinary in its conformation; exhibiting the perfect resemblance of the beak of a Duck engrafted on the head of a quadruped.” Back when the platypus was first ‘discovered’ by scientists and recorded as a species, it was considered a hoax. Back then, it was fairly […]
Read more "Teaching the Platypus"This is just a signpost towards all the stuff I have written about reading. More recently, I have been getting far more interested in the process, culture and love of reading, so this is a good time to collate what’s gone before, since I expect I’ll be writing about it a whole lot more from […]
Read more "All That I’ve Written About Reading (So Far…)"With stories and through the humanities, we can bring distant cultures into our classrooms. These may be cultures that our pupils associate with through family ties, or they may not be. The stories we do and do not tell shape the way our pupils come to see the world. But how nuanced is the view […]
Read more "Teaching/Cementing Difference"Nostalgia as Pebbledash Nostalgia guides us, and not always in the most helpful directions. My memories of primary school are scattergun, a smattering of half-forgotten moments. I remember vividly the experience of queueing up at my Year 3 teacher’s knees, waiting to ask her my burning question, my chest puffed up with the early symptoms […]
Read more "The Feeling of Reading"There is another world of education that exists outside the classrooms, and this rich tapestry of learning contexts attests most of all to the importance that people attach to education and to being educated. There persists a deeply held belief in the value of education as a form a bettering oneself – as opening doors to […]
Read more "Teaching in the Community"Sprezzatura – “effortless grace or an easy facility in accomplishing difficult actions while hiding the conscious effort that went into them.” – Sprezzatura in the primary school is rare, but when you find it, it stirs the soul. As a kind of learned naturalness or ‘rehearsed spontaneity’ (1) it is what you might find a couple of times […]
Read more "TfS – Teaching for Sprezzatura"