Archive

Messy markbooks: monitoring participation in (and across) lessons

Jan 20, 2024 | Category: Featured

Since taking the plunge with mini-whiteboards (see this post) over the past few years my ability to know whether students are paying attention, thinking and practising has dramatically increased. Beca...

#Doug Lemov #mini whiteboards #Claire Woozley

Attention, meaning & consolidation: matching technique to purpose

Jan 12, 2024 | Category: English

It's become increasingly clear to me that training teachers on how to use pedagogical techniques is of limited use. Over the past year or so I've lost count of the times I've watched a teacher act on...

#Tom Sherrington #Mary Kennedy

Earned autonomy and shared responsibility

Jan 05, 2024 | Category: Featured

Having just gotten around to reading Matthew Evans' blog, The Earned Autonomy Trap, I feel moved to break my blogging silence of the past few months.In my book, Intelligent Accountability, I present e...

#school improvement #intelligent accountability #lead

In defence of accountability

Mar 19, 2023 | Category: leadership

This weekend saw Joe Kirby publish a thoughtful blog in which he calls for an end to Quality Assurance. I agree with Joe's analysis of the causes of poor accountability - or QA - but not his suggested...

#accountability #quality assurance

OAT English curriculum project

Feb 26, 2023 | Category: English

Since January 2020 I've been working for Omiston Academies Trust as their Senior Lead for English. Over that time I and the amazing team of lead practitioners I lead have created what we think is a fa...

#English #curriculum

When retrieval practice goes wrong (and how to get it right)

Jan 28, 2023 | Category: English

Whenever a practice becomes mandated there seems to be a tendency for it to lethally mutate. When I first started writing about retrieval practice (or the testing effect as we used to call it) many pe...

#Robert Bjork #retrieval practice

Should we seek to balance teacher-led and student-led lesson activities?

Oct 29, 2022 | Category: Featured

For as long as I've been writing about education, many commentators have argued that teaching should seek to balance teacher-led and student-led activities. Although this is often presented as self-ev...

#group work #student-led #teacher-led

Gapless instruction vs 'teaching to the top'

Oct 15, 2022 | Category: Featured

Over the years I’ve recommended that teachers ‘teach to the top’ on too many occasions to count. For the most part, I’ve caveated this by included the need to ‘scaffold down,’ but, honestly, I’ve come...

Using mini whiteboards in English

Oct 09, 2022 | Category: English

According to TeacherTapp, 72% primary and 45% secondary teachers use mini whiteboards (MWBs.) There are big variations between different subjects in secondaries with 69% of MFL and 57% science teacher...

#mini whiteboards #MWBs

Implementing English: five useful teaching strategies