Archive

A review of 2014

Dec 28, 2014 | Category: Featured

I wrote 125 posts in 2014 bringing the running total to 336 posts. Here are the ten most popular this year: Why do so many teachers leave teaching? (February 2013) The Cult of Outstanding™: the pro...

#blogging

New book: What if everything you know about education is wrong?

Dec 17, 2014 | Category: Featured

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken. - Oliver Cromwell I haven't been posting much lately but that's not to say I haven't been busy writing. I'm delighted to...

The Secret of Numeracy (across the curriculum)

Dec 10, 2014 | Category: Featured

A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns… The mathematician’s patterns, like the painter’s or the poet’s must be beautiful; the ideas like the colours or the words, must fit t...

#numeracy

Revisiting lost learning by Gerald Haigh

Nov 30, 2014 | Category: learning

In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important a function as recollecting. - William James As teachers, we tend to do all in our power to prevent students from forgetting what we...

#learning #Robert Bjork #performance #forgetting #Gerald Haigh #music

What if we started trusting teachers?

Nov 22, 2014 | Category: leadership

Who would not rather trust and be deceived? - Eliza Cook The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him. - Henry Lewis Stimson I've been out of the classroom for just under a year now. In...

#Ofsted #accountability #surplus model #Grace Murray Hopper #trust

Closing the language gap: Building vocabulary

Nov 16, 2014 | Category: literacy

But words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling like dew, upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. Lord Byron Like most teachers, as soon as pupils ar...

Are we fetishising marking?

Nov 14, 2014 | Category: learning

When you make something a fetish, ashes and dusts will laugh at you, because they know even the most valuable fetishes will turn into dusts and ashes!Mehmet Murat ildan Last night I innocently posted...

#John Hattie #homework #marking #Robert Bjork #EEF #Sunk Cost Fallacy

Teacher appraisal and the fundamental attribution error

Nov 09, 2014 | Category: leadership

As favour and riches forsake a man, we discover in him the foolishness they concealed, and which no one perceived before. Jean de La Bruyère You know that lad in Year 9 who gives you constant...

#Sutton Trust #appraisal #fundamental attribution error

Why do we overestimate the importance of differences?

Nov 05, 2014 | Category: learning

"For a difference to be a difference, it must make a difference." William James We're all different. Obviously. Just like snowflakes, human beings are all special, unique and entirely individual. B...

#differentiation #learning styles #cognitive bias #Carl Weiman

Turning the tanker: lesson grading

Oct 29, 2014 | Category: Featured

I spent a good part of the past year or so railing against the injustices of lesson grading: My impatience with some Ofsted inspectors 24th July 2014 Ofsted: The end of the (lesson grading) affair 4th...