Archive

Varieties of boredom

Jan 02, 2016 | Category: blogging

For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech, To stir men’s blood: I only speak right on; I tell you that which you yourselves do knowShakespeare, Jul...

#boredom #debate

Annual report 2015

Dec 30, 2015 | Category: blogging

Well, 2015 has been and gone. It's been a great year for me personally and one in which the blog has continued to make waves. It seems that as more and more ordinary teachers are liberated from the ty...

Phonics is not a cure for cancer

Dec 30, 2015 | Category: reading

Do antibiotics work? Well, that rather depends on what you've got. If you've got a viral infection like influenza antibiotics will be useless. To fight viral infections you need to use antiviral drugs...

#phonics #Stephen D Krashen

Only phonics? A reader replies to Michael Rosen Part 2

Dec 29, 2015 | Category: reading

Following yesterday's post from Jacqui Moller-Butcher in which she responds to Michael Rosen's anti-phonics arguments, one of the complaints that has repeatedly emerged is the idea that phonics is not...

#phonics #Michael Rosen

Reading for pleasure: A reader replies to Michael Rosen Part 1

Dec 28, 2015 | Category: Featured

Back in July I wrote this post on how we might encourage children to read for pleasure to which children's author Michael Rosen left a long & detailed comment critiquing my ideas. The comment included...

A roundup of my least popular posts of 2015

Dec 27, 2015 | Category: blogging

I love blogging and I'm chuffed beyond reason when a post captures the imagination and pings around the internet for a few days. But I'm always taken unawares by what's popular and what's not. Some of...

My five favourite blogs of 2015

Dec 26, 2015 | Category: Featured

It's been some time since I put one of these lists together (The last time I seem to remember getting a fair bit of flak for indulging my gender bias.) and it seems high time to praise some of the bes...

December on The Learning Spy

Dec 30, 2015 | Category: blogging

December has traditionally been a bit of a fallow period as far as this blog is concerned, but this year, despite the inevitable Christmas lull I continued to churn out posts. Here they are in all the...

Discord isn't disharmony: in praise of inconsistency

Dec 03, 2015 | Category: leadership

Consistency is the playground of dull minds. Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens What’s so great about consistency? How has the consensus that everybody 'singing from the same hymn sheet’ is always the best i...

#consistency #experience #Yuval Noah Harari

On fragility: why systems fail

Dec 24, 2015 | Category: leadership

In Antifragile, Nassim Taleb argues that the opposite of fragile is not, as is commonly supposed, robust or resilient. These are merely neutral conditions. The antonym of fragile doesn't seem to exist...

#Nassim Taleb