Going back a few posts, I do agree with BAnanas about the way maths has been taught since the National Curriculum was brought in. There were some good ideas in the NC BUT this idea that you did 'clocks' for two days and then didn't revisit the topic for several weeks was totally nuts. It was as if they believed that once you'd taught something, however briefly, the robots, sorry children, would understand and retain that knowledge.
When we were taught to write, writing was the point of the lesson. Since the NC came in I have worked with 6 and 7 year olds who can barely string a sentence together, and over the year we have had to work at writing in several 'genres', [Their word, not mine] including playwriting, reports, instructions, riddles, rap poetry, etc. Writing is a skill in itself and I strongly believe that children should be taught to write and free to write about anything without having these constrictions placed upon them. How can you get a child to focus on the rules for playwriting when they're still getting their heads round capital letters, full stops and spellings? I never did understand why at such a young age we had to spend two weeks on how to write a play. This lack of concentration on absorbing the skills of writing until they are second nature, has to be a huge contributing reason for the poor standard of young adults literacy. They've all been through the same mill. I shall now climb off my soap box and go and have a long swim to calm down.