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5 things every new (secondary) teacher should know about reading

Reading's a funny old business. Generally, secondary school teachers  expect kids to come with a pre-loaded reading module. If they have it, all well and good. If they don't, we're stuffed. Luckily, the vast majority of students can read by the start of Year 7, even if they say they can't. But being able to read and being able to access the kind of material required to be academically successful are not at all the same thing. When I started teaching I knew next to nothing about reading, and I was meant to be an English teacher! Because it was something I [...]

2016-09-03T16:17:18+01:00August 31st, 2016|reading, training|

Some questions for the College of Teaching

So, plans for the College of Teachers are gathering pace. It increasingly looks like it's going to be a thing, whether teachers want it or not. I'm not against a College per se, but I do have some questions which I think need answering before we go too much further or invest any more than the £5 million the government has already handed over. 1. What is it actually for? I've read lots of speculation about what role the College of Teachers might have from being a body to represent teachers interests to a regulatory institution which invents and enforces standards it believes [...]

2016-08-31T13:32:43+01:00August 30th, 2016|Featured|

The Capital Letter Problem Part 2: Pressure and release

In my last post I defined what I'm calling The Capital Letter Problem and set out some of its causes. Briefly, children pick up and embed bad habits when writing and, although they often know what should be done, they'll revert to what's been practised when under any kind of pressure. One solution could be to take a lesson from the world of horse training. Horse trainer Linda Parelli talks about the use of pressure and release. As she explains it, "Pressure motivates, release teaches." ... teaching and training horses really is quite simple, because it involves not much more than the appropriate application [...]

2016-08-28T17:11:11+01:00August 27th, 2016|writing|

The Capital Letter Problem – Part 1

I have almost never met a secondary age child who doesn't conceptually understand how to use a capital letter.* But, you'd never know. Students regularly hand in work liberally sprinkled with missing - or extraneous - capitals and conscientious teachers spend hours circling the errors and patiently explaining why proper nouns and words at the beginning of a new sentence need capitals. In return, students say, "I know. It's just the way I write." It's pointless to give someone feedback about something they already know - lack of knowledge isn't the problem. The problem is caused by practice. Contrary to what [...]

2016-08-27T23:53:35+01:00August 26th, 2016|writing|

On report

Most of the schools I've taught in have operated some sort of 'on report' system for poorly behaved students. The idea is said poor behaved student presents his or her report card to teachers at the beginning of each lesson and the teacher records how satisfied they are with the behaviour exhibited in the lesson. Usually, the teacher will have to score the students behaviour, punctuality and sundry other qualities out of 5, maybe add a brief comment and then sign or initial to make the whole thing official. The student then takes the completed report to a senior teacher at the end [...]

2016-08-20T16:26:33+01:00August 20th, 2016|behaviour|

Five things every new teacher needs to know about behaviour management

Managing students' behaviour can be the most terrifying aspect of becoming a teacher. Although it's the nightmare scenarios of being told to eff off on your first day, or having a chair hurled at your head that tend to keep new teachers awake at nights, these are - in most schools - relatively rare events. More often than not it's the small stuff that undermines lessons and erodes the best efforts of teachers and students alike. In my eventful (and often unsuccessful) picaresque to discover what actually works I've made scores of mistakes and wasted countless hours trying to tackle the horrifying banality of [...]

2017-01-15T18:57:18+00:00August 19th, 2016|behaviour, training|

Should students be punished for poor behaviour?

The following blog was written for Teachers Register - the online solution to supply teaching. Punishment is a bit of a dirty word for many teachers. There often seems to be a presumption that children are naturally good and that any attempt to control or impede their impulses is somehow akin to child abuse. I’ve seen enough cruelty and cynicism from children to inure me against the belief that being ‘good’ and ‘kind’ is in any way natural. Children are capable of being as mean-spirited, spiteful and selfish as any adult. William Golding’s depiction in Lord of Flies of children left to their own [...]

2016-08-18T15:45:08+01:00August 18th, 2016|behaviour|

Praise for #PsychBook

My new book, co-written with the quite marvellous Nick Rose, has landed. What Every Teacher Needs to Know About Psychology is a whistle-stop tour of what we consider to be the most useful and important psychological principles teachers ought to be aware of. In case you're wondering whether it's for you, maybe you'll find the following opinions persuasive: This is a must-read book for every beginning teacher. And even the most experienced teachers will also find many new and useful things here. I certainly did. Dylan Wiliam, Emeritus Professor of Educational Assessment, University College London In an era when policy makers [...]

2016-08-13T11:18:28+01:00August 13th, 2016|Featured|

What do new teachers need to know about behaviour management?

Full disclosure: this article appeared first on the Teachers Register blog. Teachers Register is an online solution for schools needing supply teachers without wanting the hassle of going through a supply agency. You can follow them on Twitter here. When I first resolved to train as a teacher – and worse still, a secondary school teacher – everyone I informed of this momentous decision would stare at me aghast and ask, with varying degrees of pity and horror, “What do you want to do that for?” Then they’d sigh and mutter something along the lines of, “Well, rather you then me.” Teenagers [...]

2016-07-27T14:35:37+01:00July 26th, 2016|behaviour, training|

Developing expertise #5 Explore connections

This is the fifth post in this series detailing ways teachers might go about training their intuition in order to make better judgements and acquire real expertise. You can read the previous posts here. We should always be on the lookout for similarities, analogous situations and anything which reminds us of other areas of our practice. When we conscious build on the similarities we spot we can explore why they’re similar and consider how we could make use of the information. There’s a tendency in education to look at research findings and say, “That won’t work with my students.” It might not, [...]

2016-07-20T12:20:17+01:00July 20th, 2016|Featured|

Robert Coe’s foreword for #PsychBook

Right. It's done. What Every Teacher Needs to Know About Psychology is off to the printers tomorrow and should be available in the next few weeks. It's always a tense time when what you've written is exposed to the full glare of real readers. You never really know what the reaction will be like, but it's been very encouraging to have secured Professor Rob Coe's services to write a brief foreword. If for some reason you're not aware of who Rob is or why he matters, not only is he the director of Durham University's Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring (CEM), he has worked closely [...]

2016-07-19T21:42:14+01:00July 19th, 2016|psychology|

What is the Phonics Screening Check for?

In case you don't know, the Phonics Screening Check (PSC) is a test given to 5-6 year olds at the end of Year 1 in order to establish whether pupils are able to phonically decode to an appropriate standard. The purpose is twofold: firstly it's a policy lever designed to ensure schools are teaching Systematic Synthetic Phonics (SSP) effectively, and second to identify those children with specific learning difficulties who need extra help to improve their decoding skills. It should not be mistaken for a test of children's reading ability. The check consists of 20 real words and, controversially, 20 pseudo-words that children read [...]

2021-04-12T11:20:08+01:00July 17th, 2016|reading|
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