Product reviews for Manglish

In the words of Ashes -˜Manglish is a way of organising the curriculum collaboratively to create openings for cross-curricular links. It provides pupils with purposeful opportunities to explore how applicable maths, reading, writing and communication can be in other subject areas and the wider world'. A laudable aim.

Ashes sets out to challenge teachers to analyse the skills used in their lessons and how they can then develop their teaching to encourage their pupils to apply these skills with greater autonomy and with greater awareness of the values of each skill. -˜The Manglish child is not just a bag of bits -” they are a complete and effective learner, primed for a successful future'. The methodology is most appropriate for Key Stage 3 but could also be employed with other Key Stages.

Ashes begins by looking at schemes of work for English and mathematics at Key Stage 3 and merging them together. She then embeds topics from other subjects to link with the mathematics and the English. Her desire is for these methods to be embraced by the whole school, by doing so the planning may be more demanding but the collaboration should reduce workloads of teachers in terms of marking. Pupils' skills of applying maths, reading, writing and communication should be enhanced.

When this collaboration is found to work Ashes suggests that schools should move onto -˜big ideas'. These are abstract topics which cut across all subjects. She gives examples of magic, big brother, top teams, going digital, going for gold-¦and illustrates how other subjects relate to them.

The main theme of Manglish is the -˜Mat'. Mats give the criteria for each skill of applying maths, reading, writing and communication. There are six mats for different ability levels. An interesting planning method helps pupils organise their work. This is the GAP SPLITT -” genre, audience, purpose -” structure, presentational features, language, information, techniques, tone. There are many examples of Mats as well as numerous illustrations of GAP SPLITT. Assessment of pupils outcomes is a vital part of the process.

This book provides a framework for a whole-school cross-curricular strategy. There are many innovative and stimulating ideas -” all of which are worth discussing and considering within any school with Key Stage 3 pupils. Do Ashes methods work? Does Manglish really produce more articulate pupils with a sense of joined-up thinking? I would like to think it does -” perhaps it should be explored in many other schools and then we can determine whether Manglish does indeed live up to its laudable aims.