To be honest, I've never been a very big fan of lesson plans. This is a bit ironic given that we decided to call the set of resources on this website Lesson Plans. Of course, they aren't really lesson plans at all but schemes of work or sets of provocations with accompanying resources. I do plan all my lessons but I rarely teach from a set Scheme of Work and, as an incessant tweaker, I enjoy the process of designing lessons from scratch each week (not the most efficient practice I agree). Nevertheless, I base these lessons on an over-arching Programme of Study which enables me to stick to an agreed timetable of structured activities and largely prevents my colleagues tearing their hair out with frustration.

This year, with the various changes to subject specifications, we at Tallis were asked  to revisit our Programmes of Study at KS4 and 5 ensuring that they were fit for purpose. In an earlier post, I described why we made the decision in the visual arts to go linear. We no longer offer the AS qualification in photography or art. This summer has felt quite different with only the A2 students being moderated. This meant that we needed a Programme of Study that would sustain students for two years, support those who arrived in Year 12 with little experience of the subject but also stretch and challenge those who had done GCSE photography and needed to move on quickly.

The structure we were given by senior leaders for our new Programmes of Study was as follows:

Regular readers and NSEAD members will know about the thinking we've done this year here at PhotoPedagogy Towers about Threshold Concepts for Photography, a version of which has appeared in AD magazine. We think Threshold Concepts are important because they identify the big ideas in our subjects. We think it's important for colleagues to debate and determine these big ideas, separate from Assessment Objectives and the whims of the incumbent Secretary of State. In short, Threshold Concepts are what we (as professional teachers) agree are the foundational ideas in our various disciplines. "Powerful Knowledge" is Professor Michael Young's phrase and describes an order of knowledge that is different to the everyday wisdom brought to schools by young people. It is a controversial term, in some respects, since it contains an implicit criticism of what has been termed "progressive" approaches to education. However, my Head co-authored the book 'Knowledge and the Future School' with Professor Young so it's no surprise that "Powerful Knowledge" appears in our new Programmes of Study document! Whilst I'm not convinced about the term itself, (what is powerless knowledge?) I support the notion that disciplinary knowledge (the kind we get when we are taught subjects) is an important element in education and students can benefit from being explicitly taught stuff and thinking hard about it. There is then a direct link with threshold concepts - those troublesome nuggets of complex knowledge that take a while to assimilate and 'master'. We might call this the Content of the curriculum, although in a subject like photography or art this is often quite a complex issue. Finally, we have "Fundamental Skills". If "Powerful Knowledge" is the Knowing What, "Fundamental Skills" are the Knowing How. For us, this includes not only procedural issues (processes/techniques) such 'How to make a cyanotype' but also connects with intellectual skills like 'How to conduct strategic research' and our Habits of Mind (e.g. 'How to stick with difficulty').

We've been hard at work for the last couple of years testing a variety of mini projects with Year 12 students. Many of these have been shared in the Lesson Plans section of this website. In the last couple of weeks we have begun to shape our new Programme of Study. As always we've written it in Googledocs so we can keep it as a live document, editing, tweaking, adjusting collaboratively as we go. We are happy to share the document with other colleagues outside school, knowing how valuable it is to connect with professionals in other contexts and with different experiences and expertise to our own. This is what the first half term looks like:

Here's a link to the whole document. It's very much a work in progress so please forgive any typos and don't be surprised if it continues to change over the coming weeks. Our plan is to have something that we are pleased with by the end of term.

Hopefully, you can see how the three elements knit together: Powerful Knowledge, Threshold Concepts and Key Skills. In terms of the two year programme it breaks down like this:

Autumn 1 - An introduction: What is photography? Mini projects begin.
Autumn 2 - Mini projects continue, each dealing with a specific historical/contextual issue and giving students opportunities to develop their own work in response. Objective vs Subjective approaches to photography.
Spring 1 - Photo Exchange and the beginning of the extended Photobook project.
Spring 2 - Photobook project continues, the launchpad for the Personal Investigation.
Summer 1 - Personal Investigation continues, supplemented by occasional provocations E.g. Inside /Outside, Mirrors or Windows? etc.
Summer 2  - Personal Investigation continues.
Autumn 1 - Personal Investigation continues.
Autumn 2 - Personal Investigation continues. Students begin finalising their responses and pulling together their accompanying essays.
Spring 1 - Personal Investigation concludes. Component 2 The Externally Set Task begins (1st Feb)
Spring 2 - The Externally Set Task continues
Summer 1 - The Externally Set Task concludes (shortly after Easter)

The first two terms of Year 12 give us an opportunity to tackle the notion of photography in terms of relative objectivity and subjectivity. Alongside an introduction to the chemical darkroom as a kind of experimental space, where the magic of light can be observed and captured, we attempt to juxtapose the Modernist tradition (straight, objective, documentary) of photography with approaches that celebrate photography's ability to represent subjective experience. We also attempt to tackle issues surrounding the ethics of photography and an awareness of the difference between photography as art and all the many forms of photography that belong to other domains - the law, medicine, surveillance, war etc. We hope that an awareness of the history and theory of photography (still hotly contested) will help students see their own work in context.

We are live testing this type of structure with our current Year 12 students and making tweaks to the Programme based on what we have learned with them. So far, the basic structure seems to have worked well, giving students a good grounding in the subject (without the distraction of the AS exam) and allowing them to develop their own practice and interests. We are particularly pleased with the Photobook project. It has been a great platform on which students can build a sense of themselves as photographers and thus confidently begin the fully assessed Personal Investigation. It also means that each student is responsible for defining the nature of their own investigation through an authentic process of research and practice.

Here are just a few examples of selected pages from Year 12 photobooks:

By Jon Nicholls, Thomas Tallis School.

Like other aspects of contemporary art practice, artists' statements can be mystifying and alienating, mired in theoretical abstractions. The example above was generated by a website which aims to draw attention to the perils of artspeak. It could have been designed by George Orwell. So, why would I be recommend that photography students enter this dangerous territory?

Writing an artist's statement might seem like a curious activity for a photography student but I'd like to argue that the process can have all sorts of collateral learning opportunities beyond simply generating the statement itself. For me these include:

• exploring (and questioning) the jargon and lexicon that accompanies contemporary art
• reflecting on personal interests and ways of seeing/photographing
• playing with the identity of an artist/photographer (rather than just an art/photography student)
• thinking about making photographs as a kind of art practice
• experimenting with the relationship between language and images
• crafting and refining an authentic, personal, meaningful (and manageable) piece of writing
• generating ideas for new projects

This is an activity I've explored with Year 12 students at about the time that they are beginning to think about more personal investigations. I'm really interested in the idea that students are 'becoming artists' and, since writing statements that describe a practice (whatever that might be) are central to the business of being an artist today, I've speculated that trying this process out with students might be an interesting way for them to put on the mantle of a contemporary artist and try it out for size.

Here's how I explained the process to my students:

Using a statement generator is a great way to put some words on the blank page and begin to explore the curious language used in the world of contemporary art.** Some students will be adept with language. Others may feel very unconfident. In my experience, a significant proportion of the class will have chosen photography A level partly because they don't consider themselves to be 'academic'. The fear of the blank page can be overwhelming.

The 500 letters website is the most sophisticated statement generator that I've found (if you know one that's better please let me know in the comments below). Once you've clicked the 'this application' link, you're presented with the following questionnaire. This gathers enough information about you, your details and interests as an artist, to create a more nuanced statement than other generator like arty b******s, for example.

This is what I got back when I filled in the questionnaire:

Some of this is nonsense, some of it a bit silly. But, there are certain phrases that ring true. There are some interesting words to look up - "aleatoric", "transubstantiation", "assemblages", "analogies". The more items you select from the list available in the questionnaire, the longer and more detailed your statement. The point of using a statement generator is analogous to the act of photography itself. Photographers select from a world that is already full of stuff. Unlike the other arts, they rarely, if ever, begin with a blank page. The idea is not to keep the statement generated by the website. It's just an amusing way to get started. This brings us to Stage 2.

Now that the blank page has words on it, students are able to edit freely rejecting, augmenting and refining until they have something that sounds a bit like them. There is plenty of other helpful advice out there if anyone gets a bit stuck or if a student prefers top go it alone. This blog post is a really helpful guide to constructing an artist's statement from scratch. If you don't want your statement to "suck", check out this advice. 

I have sometimes asked students to interview each other about their work. You could provide a list of questions or ask the students to create their own. You could read or watch some great interviews online. The purpose of this activity is a bit like the hot-seating I used to do when I taught English. When interviewed, each student has to put on the mantle of the expert and act as if they are an artist/photographer with an existing practice. I provide some general guidelines. No false modesty. All questions must be answered as fully as possible. Interviewers should probe with follow up questions. That sort of thing. It's a good idea for partners to record these interviews (using their phones, for example) so that both parties can concentrate on the discussion.

The opening sentence is important. Spend a bit of time on this. Here's an example that I've adapted from an existing artist's statement:

Here's another:

There's a famous story about the novelist James Joyce bumping into another writer who enquired about his day's work. Joyce had spent the entire day writing two sentences. The admirer wondered whether he had been struggling with a particular word. Joyce replied that he had written all the words early that morning but had spent the rest of the day putting them in the "perfect order". 

Getting a range of feedback about your statement is really important. Other readers can quiz you about the details, check that it makes sense and ask you for further clarification, if necessary. It's also important that the authors take responsibility for their words and see the statement as personal and meaningful (and not just because this is what they are required to do for Assessment Objective 4). A statement may take several drafts to get right. It's something the student can return to time and again, adapting as they go, to better reflect the nature of their evolving practice. It might be worth considering using an online word processor (like Google Docs) which allows for collaborative, iterative, remote editing. Documents can be shared with multiple editors and each version is saved behind the scenes. It's also almost impossible to "lose",  "leave at home" or be accidentally consumed by the family pet. 

If the process has been successful and most students feel as though they have created an authentic statement about their practice as photographers/artists it might be a good idea to use these statements as catalysts for a new project. I have done this, asking my class to write or explain a proposed project that articulates the ideas in their statements. This could be as simple as a sentence or two or it might take the form of a conversation. Either way, it provides an opportunity for students to turn words into action, testing out their modus operandi. Ultimately, these statements might also form the basis of the students' personal study essays.

​If the process has been unsuccessful, it's important to reflect on the collateral learning. Writing reasonably substantial pieces of continuous prose has become even more important in the new A level specifications. Consider this a trial run. Studying a particular discipline can be a liminal experience in which students enter a particular threshold but may remain in a kind of limbo state for some time, struggling with troublesome knowledge. Acknowledging and explaining an artistic practice must surely be one of the most important experiences available to an A level arts student. Rome wasn't built in a day.

** For a detailed riposte to the accusations presented in Triple Canopy's article “International Art English" by Alix Rule and David Levine, check out this post on the e-flux website.