Archive

How can we retain the best teachers?

Jul 20, 2013 | Category: Featured

Do we face a crisis in teacher retention?A few months ago I wrote a post which asked, why so many teachers left teaching. In it I considered the possible reasons for the shocking statistic that 50% of...

#KIPP #performance related pay #retention #The Irreplaceables

Fireworks teaching: why less might well be more

Jul 15, 2013 | Category: Featured

Why should I let the toad work Squat on my life? Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork And drive the brute off?Philip Larkin – Toads Many people (and many students) seem to expend considerable energy in a...

#Jim Smith #Harry Webb #Philip Larkin #the effort hypothesis #Thomas Starkey

Where lesson observations go wrong

Jul 12, 2013 | Category: Featured

UPDATE: Since writing this post in July 2013 a lot has happened. Ofsted has stopped grading individual lessons and many schools have recognised the futility and harm caused by lesson grading. Here is...

#lesson observations #Sir Michael Wilshaw #outstanding lessons #progress

Another year in the life of an English teacher

Jul 08, 2013 | Category: blogging

So, another year is done. The Learning Spy has officially entered into its third year of existence. And, after 173 posts I'm not only older but, just possibly, a tiny bit wiser.This time last year I r...

Why the knowledge/skills debate is worth having

Jul 07, 2013 | Category: blogging

'I note the obvious differences between each sort and type, but we are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike'.Maya Angelou I've come an awful long way since September 2011 when Cristina Milos to...

#Cristina Milos #knowledge #skills #Sir Michael Wilshaw #Old Andrew #SOLO

Teaching sequence for developing independence Stage 4: Practise

Jul 04, 2013 | Category: Featured

What does practice make? Well, it turns out that my mum was wrong. Doug Lemov points out in Practice Perfect that practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent. What we practise we get good...

#deliberate practice #Ron Berger #Flow #Grit #Doug Lemov

Teaching sequence for developing independence Stage 3: Scaffold

Jul 02, 2013 | Category: Featured

So, you've explained the new concepts and ideas students will need to know, deconstructed examples so that they know how to use these concepts in practice and you've modelled the process of how an exp...

#Lee Donaghy #scaffolding #academic register #PEE #reciprocal teaching #Vygotsky #zone of proximal development

Teaching sequence for developing independence Stage 2: Model

Jun 30, 2013 | Category: English

Over the past few years I've thought a lot about how and what we should teach. My journey has been long and painful. I used to evangelically promote the teaching of transferable '21st century skills'...

#Lee Donaghy #modelling #Bryan Reade #deconstruction #Marcus Sedgwick #nominalisation #Simon Scarrow

Testing & assessment - have we been doing the right things for the wrong reasons?

Jun 16, 2013 | Category: assessment

A curious peculiarity of our memory is that things are impressed better by active than by passive repetition. I mean that in learning (by heart, for example), when we almost know the piece, it pays be...

#AfL #Robert Bjork #Daisy Christodoulou #retrieval #testing

So, what does 'gifted' mean anyway?

Jun 14, 2013 | Category: Featured

As you may be aware, non-selective secondary schools are failing the 'most able'. How do we know? Because a brand new Ofsted report tells us so. The report's key findings include such revelations as t...

#Ofsted #Tom Bennett #Geoff Barton #Tom Sherrington #G&T