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Monthly Archives: September 2011

Reading should be our top priority

2011-09-28T20:55:52+01:00September 28th, 2011|English, literacy|

I've just read a sobering piece on reading in UK schools from Mike Baker's website written by Roy Blatchford, a former headteacher and Her Majesty’s Inspector of Schools, and Director of the National Education Trust. Here it is: Provisional figures for 2011 indicate that, in England, one child in five reaches age 11 unable to read confidently. Confident, that is, to access the secondary school curriculum they are embarking on this month. History suggests that those same children will struggle over five years of secondary schooling to achieve an English grade C at 16+. The latest GCSE tables indicate that thirty [...]

Reasons to be cheerful

2011-09-26T21:31:49+01:00September 26th, 2011|learning|

So, it's now the fourth week back and despite been plum tuckered (I've a vague notion that this means tired) I'm still smiling. I've just read Kenny Pieper's latest post on how he's feeling after (in his case) six weeks back and thought it timely to read over my Back To School post written on the first day back after bathing in the rosy glow of creativity that my wonderful faculty had induced in me on hearing about the splendid variety of good things they intended to forge ahead with this year. In order to maintain the mad-eyed positivity needed to [...]

Forget the answer, what's the question?

2011-09-24T16:37:17+01:00September 24th, 2011|learning|

We all know the value of effective questioning, but should it be the students rather than the teacher doing a bit more of the asking? After reading about Question Formulation Technique (getting students to think of their own questions rather than just answering mine) a few weeks ago I was really keen to give it a whirl. Tait Cole However, Dylan Wiliam's SSAT 2010 keynote is still ringing in my ears: we (teachers) should not waste time on self indulgent gimmicks if it causes us to move away from AfL and other proven high impact teaching & learning strategies. [...]

Learning Journeys

2011-09-21T22:00:27+01:00September 21st, 2011|learning|

Last month I wrote a post asking whether there was a point to starters. Luckily for me, Darren Mead got in touch to tell me about what he has termed Learning Journeys. Ever since I've been absolutely smitten. The idea is incredibly simple: at the beginning of the lesson, provide students with a visual representation of the learning which will take place during the lesson. That's it. A visual learning objective. Geoff Petty in his book Evidence Based Teaching shows that using this strategy along with a traditional learning objective plus an activity which links to students' prior learning has an effect [...]

Is there a case for summative assessment?

2013-07-23T08:40:56+01:00September 19th, 2011|assessment|

I've written a lot on the importance of formative assessment recently and feel pretty clear in my own mind of its efficacy. In contrast I see summative assessment as existing only as an external measure of success or failure. I know it exists, and I know it's fairly important to my students' life chances. It's also one of the primary means by which my professional practice is judged, so I'd better take notice of it. This seems like a necessary evil, not something to be celebrated. Cristina Milos and Jennifer Borgioli have challenged this view and asserted that actually, summative assessment [...]

Questions every teacher should ask every day

2011-09-18T22:03:26+01:00September 18th, 2011|learning|

I've just read David Warlick's blog post on Transformative Questions and am feeling pretty excited about it. In it he challenges teachers to "create a culture of learners that thrive in the 21st century." He says that learning should include the following qualities. They should : - be responsive to learners' needs - provoke conversation, - inspire personal investment - be guided by safely-made mistakes.   He has come up with these questions to challenge us when designing lessons: 1. How might I alter this assignment or project so that it “Responds” to the learner? How can the experience “Talk Back?” 2. How might [...]

Easy vs Hard

2011-09-16T18:39:45+01:00September 16th, 2011|Featured, learning|

We choose to do these things not because they are easy but because they are hard. - JFK We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. - Aristotle A teachers' job is not to make work easy. It is to make it difficult. If you are not challenged, you do not make mistakes. If you do not make mistakes, feedback is useless. - John Hattie - Visible Learning Our attitude to effort is embedded in our language: easy does it, hard luck, easy on the eye, don't take it so hard. Why is it that [...]

What can engineers teach us about assessment?

2011-09-14T20:49:26+01:00September 14th, 2011|assessment|

If, like me, you thought the answer to the above question was almost certainly nothing, take a look at this: Pretty neat, huh? I think this really makes the point that a lot of what we do in schools and call AfL isn’t. Here are a few handy reminders about what exactly formative assessment is: We use the general term assessment to refer to all those activities undertaken by teachers—and by their students in assessing themselves—that provide information to be used as feedback to modify teaching and learning activities. Such assessment becomes formative assessment when the evidence is actually [...]

Should we stop doing good things?

2013-07-22T18:03:20+01:00September 12th, 2011|training|

Surely doing good things is something we should do more of? Especially at school. I have seldom met a teacher who is not interested in doing the best for their students and therefore pretty keen to do good things. Good things are, well... good. Aren't they? Having just watched Dylan Wiliam's keynote speech at the SSAT conference in 2010, I'm not so sure. The speech was provocatively titled, "Stopping people doing good things: the essence of effective leadership". Needless to say, this is not a leadership style I have encountered before and until watching, probably wouldn't have been interested in trying. [...]

Knowledge or skills?

2013-07-20T12:29:52+01:00September 11th, 2011|Featured|

Skills, knowledge, who cares?  I'm a huge fan of the implementation of Personal Learning and Thinking Skills as part of the English National Curriculum and feel confused and concerned about the current government's stance on knowledge & skills. see here for an example. Last week I had a really thought provoking conversation on this subject with Cristina Milos (@surreallyno) on Twitter which I think unpicks some of the issues: CM: When teenagers can't locate a country on the map, "facts" are suddenly important. Preaching "skills" before /or/ vs. "knowledge" is silly. Me: Is it? The fact that Poland is east of Germany tells us little, [...]

Back to school

2011-09-09T21:15:16+01:00September 9th, 2011|leadership|

What I really like about going back to school in September is that it's a new year with no mistakes. The students' books are graffiti free and and all the dates and titles have been neatly underlined. There is nothing to mark and my lessons are inspirational and well planned. the annual rot has yet to sink in. I also like deciding on my new school year resolutions. I have to say, I can't be bothered with the proper New Year resolutions and avoid them as the mass market nonsense that they are. School year resolutions are different though. They're normally [...]

Differentiation: to do or not to do?

2013-07-20T16:27:24+01:00September 7th, 2011|assessment|

Of all the impossible tasks expected of poor, over-worked teachers, differentiation is the most troublesome. Why? Because on the one hand, if you did it properly every lesson you'd be reduced to a dribbling wreck in less than a week. T'other hand though is that it's really really important. Therein lies our dilemma: we know we should be doing (a lot) more of it but we just don't have the time or energy to do it properly. Francis Gilbert says on the subject, "The whole thing is a duplicitous gimmick...In reality schools just do not have the resources, time or space [...]

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