Archive

In praise of uncertainty

Oct 07, 2019 | Category: Featured

I want you to conjure up the spirit of one of your primitive ancestors. Picture yourself hunting for food on the savannah or in a primordial forest. Imagine, if you will, that you catch a glimpse of m...

Is reading comprehension even a thing?

Oct 05, 2019 | Category: reading

UPDATE: In light of this post on Timothy Shanahan's blog, I am persuaded that reading comprehension is a thing, but the advice below still stands. Most of the schools I visit are unsurprisingly keen t...

The curriculum: Intent, implementation and impact

Jul 23, 2019 | Category: Featured

This article first appeared in the marvellous free periodical, Teach Secondary. Do pop over and subscribe. Most teachers will be aware that Ofsted is launching a new inspection framework this Septembe...

Why 'just reading' might make more of a difference than teaching reading

Jun 22, 2019 | Category: Featured

Few people would disagree that improving children's reading ability would be a good thing. Not only would it open up greater opportunities in life, it would boost their cognitive development and incre...

A few thoughts about teaching poetry

Jun 03, 2019 | Category: Featured

It is, I hope, uncontroversial to say that poetry is not a popular art form. While it's wonderful to hear the sales of poetry rose by 12% in 2018, with over 1.3 million volumes sold, that's dwarfed by...

What's the big deal with Big Questions?

May 31, 2019 | Category: Featured

You might know them as Fertile Questions, Enquiry Questions, or plain old, Big Questions, but the idea that the curriculum ought to be organised around broad, disciplinary, substantive enquires is a p...

Do detentions work?

Apr 29, 2019 | Category: behaviour

When I was a student I was given a lot of detentions. After some particularly appalling behaviour on a French exchange trip I was given two months of 1 hour after school detentions. This was a big dea...

#detentions

Should we scrap SATs? Cautiously, yes

Apr 20, 2019 | Category: assessment

Earlier this week, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn turned up at the NEU annual conference with some crowd pleasing ideas. The most eye-catching of these was that he would, if elected, scrap SATs, saying,...

#Tim Oates #Rob Coe #Jeremy Corbyn #Richard Selfridge #SATs

Three animated films about learning

Apr 09, 2019 | Category: Featured

UPDATE December 2020: BBC Bitesize has moved the films here.Back in December I gave a lecture to the staff of BBC Bitesize about how learning works and how they might go about making more effective le...

How do we know pupils are making progress? Part 4: Instruction

Apr 07, 2019 | Category: assessment

This is the final post in a series looking at how we can be sure that students are making progress through the curriculum.The whole purpose of knowing whether students are making progress is to be abl...