XFacebookYouTubeLinkedInEmail

Yearly Archives: 2011

What's the point of INSET days?

2011-08-30T21:03:37+01:00August 30th, 2011|training|

Recently, I overheard a colleague say that they had never attended an INSET (IN SErvice Training) day that wasn't a complete waste of time. I have to admit that I felt rather startled by this as, with some notable exceptions, I generally enjoy these days. You get to natter to people you don't see everyday, you get a break from the kids and often there's a free lunch! But how often do I learn anything? Well, that all depends on the type of INSET day it is. All too often the only requirement for staff  is that they sit and listen. [...]

How to make friends and influence people

2011-08-29T10:03:22+01:00August 29th, 2011|leadership|

So, you’re starting a new job. You’re probably 1 part excited to 9 parts terrified. Don’t worry: that’s fairly normal. This post aims to suggest 10 straightforward ways to settle in to your new role whether you’re an NQT or an old lag in a new school; a fast track careerist or frantically treading water. It might sound a bit Machiavellian and cynical, but these ideas will make your life easier and happier. The original social networker 1. Get noticed Most schools have some sort of staff briefing one or more times a week. Say something. Not too often [...]

Exam analysis

2011-08-28T13:17:35+01:00August 28th, 2011|assessment, leadership|

September looms and I've already been given an appointment for my Progress Meeting to discuss last year's results and strategies for this year's. On the one hand, I could be forgiven for feeling quite complacent: the English faculty achieved 84% A*-C which is up 16% from last year and an unprecedented success rate for the school. Our English Literature results have done up from an already outstanding 93% to a phenomenal 98%. Media Studies is also at 98% and 66% A*-A (this with 90 students having been entered - almost 3 times as many as previous years). I think I could [...]

How to write an outstanding job application

2011-08-27T20:54:15+01:00August 27th, 2011|leadership|

Everyone dreads those personal statement boxes on the job application form but we’ve all had to write ‘em and, if we’re in employment, they’ve clearly done the trick. Why would anyone literate need a guide to writing job applications? Well, as an English teacher I certainly consider myself to be more than merely functionally literate and I some of the feedback on my ability to write a letter of application I had last year was very hard to hear. The head teacher of a school at which I’d applied to become an assistant head told me the reason I wasn’t called [...]

Challenging Bloom's Taxonomy

2011-08-24T21:57:08+01:00August 24th, 2011|myths|

Have had a few thought provoking debates recently about the validity of Bloom's Taxonomy. Yes, that's right, a challenge to the orthodoxy! I've read through a selection of articles which all point to the fact that there is no real evidence base to support Bloom's theories and worse, thinking in this rigid, hierarchical way can even be damaging! Can it be true? One criticism is that it can lead to teachers not really thinking through the different categories of thinking skills each time they're used which lead students to think superficially. Any classification of skills along the lines of Bloom's can [...]

Teaching texting

2011-08-23T14:43:29+01:00August 23rd, 2011|English|

A lot of folks are very worried about the impact of teenagers texting. In a Daily Mail article (oh! the shame), John Humphrys expressed the view that "SMS vandals... are doing to our language what Genghis Khan did to his neighbours" and goes on to warn of the danger of "our written language [ending up] as a series of ridiculous emoticons and ever-changing abbreviations". Sounds pretty dreadful, doesn't it? For as long as there have been mobile phones, it has been the job of schools and teachers to confiscate 'em. The standard approach seems to be blanket bans in classrooms and a grudging [...]

What's the point of assessment?

2011-08-22T12:10:55+01:00August 22nd, 2011|assessment|

Came across an interesting challenge by @purposeducation - #500words campaign, This week the topic is #purposedassess, so here goes... Everyone knows that there's two different types of assessment, right? There's summative assessment which is all about finding out whether students have learnt everything they've been taught. This is the kind of assessment that the media reports on and which schools are judged on. GCSEs, SATs, A levels etc. Then there's formative assessment, or Assessment for Learning as its been rebranded. This is all about finding out what kind of progress students are making. This is (hopefully) what goes on in classrooms [...]

Formative assessment and the mark scheme

2011-07-23T23:03:52+01:00July 23rd, 2011|assessment, English, learning, training|

I’ve been consciously and actively using exam board mark schemes as an essential component of formative assessment with my classes for some time now and thought it was time to share what I was up to more widely. I led a CPD session on this recently and while none of what I said was new or even particularly surprising, it did at least remind us what the point of marking all those essays is. Before putting my presentation together, I decided to check out what was out there already. Plenty of stuff on formative assessment but nothing specifically (nothing that I [...]

100 Word Challenge entry

2011-07-21T18:31:55+01:00July 21st, 2011|Featured|

This is my attempt at Julia Skinner's 100 word challenge. Be gentle with me. Bronzed Tanned. Weather-beaten. Sun-kissed. Interesting that a bunch of pallid, over-coated islanders should so worship the sun. Or maybe not so interesting. We don’t get enough of it perhaps to feel complacent. Bronzed has always seemed such a heroic ideal. Not only because statues of soldiers are routinely cast in the stuff, but because of the Bronze Age heroes I lapped up as a kid: Achilles, Odysseus, Agamemnon. For me, a particularly pale specimen, the reality of spending time in the sun is very far [...]

Emerging leaders

2011-07-20T21:36:13+01:00July 20th, 2011|leadership|

Have just completed the last session of the leadership course I've been on for the last 6 weeks. What great CPD! For this final session we all had to prepare a presentation on a project which had lead or wanted to lead and demonstrate the leadership skills we had used. Whilst my presentation focussed on internal issues within my own school which are not really suitable for blogging about, what was particularly great was that I got to listen to and comment on 15 other people's projects. We had a real mix ranging from making maths lessons more creative, to building [...]

Does group work work?

2011-07-18T22:17:05+01:00July 18th, 2011|learning|

Have just been reading 59 Seconds by Professor Richard Wiseman (@RichardWiseman) and am rather dismayed to note that contrary to popular belief, but according to scientific research, groups are less creative than individuals! Does this mean that by getting students to work in groups I have been stifling their creativity? Apparently this is down to what Wiseman calls 'diffusion of responsibility'. Because there are other people to take the blame, we make less effort when we are part of a team. The consensus view in education now seems to be all about groups. Is this just a vogue? Does it need [...]

What's the point of lesson observations?

2011-07-17T11:35:16+01:00July 17th, 2011|Featured|

I feel I need to start by saying that I am not questioning the need for lesson observations. They're a crucial part of developing our professional practice and ensure T&L is quality assured. No, what this post is really concerned with is asking what we hope to achieve by observing teachers. For some time now I have been musing on the purpose of lesson observations  as well as considering new ways to encourage staff to develop their teaching practice. This has been merrily percolating at the back of my brain for some time but has now, I hope, turned into something a [...]

Toggle Sliding Bar Area
Go to Top