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A request: Have you experienced any craziness in your school?

If there's something you really want to believe, that's what you should question the most. Penn Jillette (Penn & Teller) So. I've started work on my next book, provisionally (and provocatively) entitled, Why Everything You've Been Told About Teaching Is Wrong. Contrary to expectations I want to make is fair-minded and as lacking in ideological slant as I'm able. To achieve this I need your help. The chapter I'm currently writing is on cognitive bias, and I'd really like to use some examples of the sorts of blinkered thinking which we can be drawn into in schools. Obviously I've got lots [...]

2014-05-25T22:41:32+01:00May 24th, 2014|myths|

A horror story: Does Ofsted get it wrong again?

Following my the post earlier in the week on the fact that Ofsted inspectors seemingly continue to break the rule with impunity, a number of people got in touch with similar tales of woe. It certainly seems that a lot of teachers seem to be experiencing inspectors flouting the very clear instructions in the new April 2014 edition of the Inspection Handbook. Maybe someone should keep some sort of database of these instances?  I have to say that Mike Cladingbowl, the National Director of Schools seems to be doing his best to combat so-called 'rogue inspectors and yesterday tweeted this: I'd love to know [...]

2014-05-24T10:26:46+01:00May 23rd, 2014|Featured|

A new twist on Slow Writing

Since first writing about Slow Writing back in May 2012 the original post has had almost 12,000 views and I've received regular emails and tweets from teachers who have been inspired to use and adapt what is in essence an incredibly simple idea. Last week I got just such an email from primary teacher, Michael Lomas. His tweak is so simple and so good I thought I should share it with you. Just thought I would fire off a quick email to let you know that I have been having a go at using Slow Writing in my Year 2 (age 6 and 7) English lessons after reading about [...]

2014-05-23T13:49:51+01:00May 22nd, 2014|Featured|

Ofsted inspectors continue to do whatever they like

A few days a go after reading and retweeting this blog post from @cazzypot on the ongoing vagaries and inconsistencies of Ofsted, A head of MFL at a school in Hounslow got in touch to let me know how dissatisfied she was were here recent experience of the inspectorate. What follows is an edited version of the email she sent me. Ofsted visited my new school in April this year, a week after they had 'done' my previous school. Former colleagues told me of unfair grading despite the fact that inspectors have been instructed not to grade individual lessons. The first day of the inspection just came and [...]

2014-05-21T16:34:37+01:00May 21st, 2014|Featured|

This is what I want

In the past few days I've told you what I think and a little bit about who I am. This post outlines the role I'd ideally like. Choosing to leave the classroom has had some surprising consequences. It was very flattering that my local paper wanted to write about the fact the blog won an award, but look at that headline! I'm not at all sure how I feel about being an 'ex-teacher'. Does it necessarily follow that just because I'm not currently at the chalk face, I'm no longer a teacher? Maybe it does. There were some pressing push factors as well as [...]

2014-05-20T18:30:32+01:00May 20th, 2014|Featured|

This is who I am

This post was written at the behest of Rory Gallagher (@EddieKayshun) who assured me that some people might find it interesting to know a little more about my background. He has persuaded all sorts of fascinating teachers to share their stories on his marvellous Who I Am, What I Do site. I recommend you check it out. My experience of school was troubled. It took me a long time to get over it. Apparently, my mother took me out of school for several months at the age of seven in order to teach me to read. My primary school had written [...]

2014-05-18T20:27:42+01:00May 18th, 2014|Featured|

Some pictures and reviews of #litbook

Many thanks to all the people who have kindly been in touch to tell me their long-awaited copies of The Secret of Literacy have arrived; I hope you find it useful and enjoyable. If you do like it, please don't underestimate how grateful I'll be for a positive review on Amazon (Many thanks to D Hewitson for the first 5 star review.) If you'd like to send me a picture of your copy of #litbook, Crown House have promised a prize for the most imaginative... Here are a few of the pics I've been sent so far: @RachelOrr @TeacherToolkit [...]

2014-05-26T10:17:09+01:00May 17th, 2014|Featured|

This is what I think

I love a good aphorism, and I also like lists. I keep being asked what I think about stuff so, in the spirit of clarity, here's a list of some of the things I think about education: Behaviour Getting behaviour right is the top priority for schools; when that's cracked everything else will be possible. Until it's cracked, nothing will work well. Blaming teachers for the failure of a school to implement and stick to a robust behaviour system is morally reprehensible. Misbehaving is a choice: if children behave badly in your lesson, it's not your fault. Although it is your responsibility. [...]

2017-04-04T12:02:05+01:00May 14th, 2014|leadership|

Squaring the circle: can learning be easy and hard?

Regular readers will know I've been ploughing a furrow on this question for quite a while now. Last June I synthesised my thinking in this post: Deliberately difficult – why it’s better to make learning harder. For those of you who might be unfamiliar with the arguments, I'll summarise them briefly: - Learning is different from performance (the definition of learning I'm using here is the long-term retention and transfer of knowledge and skills) - We can't actually see learning happen; we can only infer it from performance - Performance is a very poor indicator of learning - Reducing performance might actually increase learning This [...]

2014-09-17T19:56:47+01:00May 11th, 2014|learning|

3 reasons why you should read The Secret of Literacy

This is, unashamedly, a sales pitch for my new book, The Secret of Literacy: making the implicit explicit which should be available in the next few days. Apologies if such blatant self-promotion offends your sensibilities, but do bear with me; it won't be a hard sell. Who's the book for? Teachers. All teachers. It's definitely not aimed at English teachers, although I would hope they'll find it useful. Neither is it aimed at literacy coordinators; there are better practical guides on how to roll out a literacy policy. And it's not aimed at secondary specialists although the overwhelming majority of my experience has been in [...]

2014-09-24T22:57:03+01:00May 10th, 2014|literacy|

Intuition vs evidence: the power of prediction

I wrote earlier in the week about why, despite it's limitations, research is better than a hunch. Since then, I've been reading Daniel Willingham's article on Real Clear Education; he says that it's not that people are stupid but that science is hard. He refers to the nobel prize winning physicist Carl Weiman whose interest in science education came from many years of working closely with physics undergraduates and observing that "their success in physics courses was such a poor predictor of a student’s ultimate success as a physicist." Or in other words, performance was not a useful indication of learning. Weiman argues that rigorous eduction [...]

2015-01-26T12:37:57+00:00May 8th, 2014|myths|

What works is a lot better than what doesn't

Teachers often talk about the vital nature of their work and the fact that for the young people we teach there are no second chances. I've heard teaching compared to air traffic control and the risks in the classroom compared to the risk involved in miscalculating the landing of a plane. These kinds of comparison are made to alert us to the importance of what we do, but clearly they're over dramatic and, in a very real way, untrue. I don't want to make out that what we do is unimportant but if we teach algebra badly no one dies. But what [...]

2014-05-03T00:05:35+01:00May 3rd, 2014|myths|
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