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The limits of growth mindset

What's the difference between success and failure? Effort, of course! As everyone now knows, all you need to ensure you're a success is a shed-load of hard work and the belief that you can do anything you set your mind to! Yay! I want to be an astronaut! This is mindsets-lite: the undifferentiated and naive belief that the right kind of thinking leads to wonderful things. Like most well-intentioned educational fads, there's a kernel of truth in these sorts of claims. Hard work does make a difference; beliefs do matter. As always, though, reality is a little more complicated than that. To shed [...]

2016-05-30T10:54:25+01:00May 30th, 2016|psychology|

Why I think table top mats are better than wall displays

A couple of days ago I posted an article exploring why I'm not keen on teaching being expected to spend time putting on displays in their classrooms. This made some people happy :) but a few people were sad :(  . One criticism was that some displays contain important information that can be covered up so that students can be tested to see whether they've memorised it. This is the Bananarama Principle: It ain't what you do it's the way that you do it. Wall displays can be used well and table top mats can be used badly. So, of course displays [...]

2016-05-29T09:13:48+01:00May 29th, 2016|Featured|

What every teacher needs to know about… classroom display

Once again the finest monthly publication for secondary teachers, Teach Secondary, have demeaned themselves by publishing another of my sloppily put together rants. This month my barrel scraping has reached a new as I quibble about such harmless trivia as teachers putting up posters. Sorry.  The firmly established, yet largely unexamined, position on classroom display is that there’s nothing quite so magical as a classroom plastered in beautiful display work and nothing half so bleak as a bare wall devoid of all humanity and joy. A good teacher will, as a matter of course, strive not only to fill every inch of wall space with exciting [...]

2016-05-26T21:13:45+01:00May 26th, 2016|Featured|

Coming soon…What every teacher needs to know about psychology

Over the past few months, Nick Rose and I have been working together on a new book which sets out what, in our admittedly biased opinion, every teacher ought to know from the field of psychology. Luckily, Nick is a psychology teacher (with a background in para-psychological research. Yes, really!) so at least one of us knows what we're talking about. We think the book is important because over the past few decades, psychological research has increasingly made strides into understanding how we learn, but it's only in the last few years that those working in education have started to become aware of these insights. [...]

2016-05-26T08:42:28+01:00May 25th, 2016|psychology|

Triple impact feedback on the EEF marking review

1.The EEF publish a review of the evidence of marking. 2. I give them some feedback. 3. The EEF respond to my criticisms. 4. Well... we could go on for ever. Feel familiar? James Richardson and Robbie Coleman, say they'd be happy "if people took the current lack of evidence on marking as the key finding of the report." So would I. Unfortunately, I don't think that will be the case. Teachers and school leaders are desperate to have their views validated and some will, I fear, latch on to the weakly evidenced "findings" the report offers. Now of course, absence of evidence [...]

2016-11-30T14:14:09+00:00May 24th, 2016|Featured|

Seven tools for thinking #1: Use your mistakes

"The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them - especially not from yourself." - Daniel Dennett. I've been rereading the philosopher, Daniel Dennett's wonderfully erudite manual for making and improving on mistakes, Intuition Pumps. The first - and maybe most important - of his seven tools for thinking is that we should use our mistakes*. Now, there's a lot written in praise of mistakes and failure; some of it sensible but much of it eulogistic to the point of absurdity. Making mistakes for the sake of making mistakes is not something to be lauded, it's just a waste of time. [...]

2016-06-11T11:08:15+01:00May 22nd, 2016|Featured|

A marked decline? The EEF’s review of the evidence on written marking

Question: How important is it for teachers to provide written feedback on students' work? Answer: No one knows. This is essentially the substance of the Education Endowment Foundation's long-awaited review on written marking. The review begins with the following admission: ...the review found a striking disparity between the enormous amount of effort invested in marking books, and the very small number of robust studies that have been completed to date. While the evidence contains useful findings, it is simply not possible to provide definitive answers to all the questions teachers are rightly asking. [my emphasis] But then they go and spoil it all by [...]

2016-05-19T10:45:32+01:00May 18th, 2016|assessment|

Testing, testing… why one test can’t do everything

The thing which most seems to rile people about testing is the fact that it puts children under stress. A certain amount of stress is probably a good thing - there's nothing as motivating as a looming deadline - but too much is obviously a bad thing. Martin Robinson writes here that ... a teacher needn’t pass undue exam stress onto her pupils, and a Headteacher needn’t pass undue stress onto her teachers. People work less well under a lot of stress; by passing it down the chain, each link ceases to function so well. Therefore if a school wants to [...]

2016-05-17T19:16:16+01:00May 17th, 2016|assessment|

Why study grammar?

Trying to express complex thoughts in simple English ... is demanding, challenging and takes time. Terry Leahy There's been a lot of fuss over the past week about whether it's appropriate to assess children's knowledge of grammar at the end of Key Stage 2. Various commentators even seem to take a perverse pride in their lack of knowledge boasting that ignorance hasn't held them back. But amidst all the confusion and vitriol, some people have been asking why, if grammatical knowledge is so important, most people seem to manage without it. This is a reasonable question, and one worth answering. First we need to [...]

2017-11-30T08:44:52+00:00May 12th, 2016|writing|

Improving critical reading through comparative judgement

The following is a guest blog from Dr Chris Wheadon of No More Marking. The reformed GCSEs in English present new challenges for pupils in critical reading and comprehension. Teachers across the country - and pupils - are studying mark schemes and trying to interpret what they mean and how they may relate to standards. No More Marking, working with David Didau and a group of 11 schools took a different approach. David created some stimulus material for pupils in Year 10 in line with the reformed GCSE English questions. Pupils were given an unseen text and then asked to write [...]

2016-05-11T19:04:24+01:00May 11th, 2016|English, reading|

What every teacher needs to know about… students who leave secondary school unable to read

Many thanks to the good folks at Teach Secondary magazine for publishing yet another of my incoherent rants. This time I set my sights on the lamentable and inexcusable failure of secondary schools to teach students to read with adequate fluency and accuracy. If a student leaves secondary school unable to read it is the school’s fault. I’ll leave that opening sentence hanging, parked like a tank on your lawn, while we consider what is actually involved in teaching students to read. Reading involves two linked abilities: language comprehension and decoding. Decoding is the ability to turn squiggles on a page (graphemes) [...]

2016-04-25T11:19:48+01:00April 25th, 2016|reading|

What I know about whether ‘no excuses’ behaviour systems work

I read John Tomsett's account of his speech at Michaela School's Debate on 23rd April on why 'no excuses' behaviour systems don't work with great interest. As a speech it is well researched, well argued and kinda misses the point. He acknowledges this when he says, "If I’m against “no excuses” discipline, I must, logically, be in favour of “excuses” discipline" but then dismisses this as "nonsense". But is it? He says that "relentless rigorous routines, and consistent, and I mean truly consistent, implementation of behaviour systems were the bedrock of good behaviour management in schools". What's that if not 'no excuses' discipline? [...]

2016-12-31T15:01:56+00:00April 25th, 2016|behaviour|
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