5 things every new (secondary) teacher should know about reading
Reading's a funny old business. Generally, secondary school teachers expect kids to come with a pre-loaded reading module. If they have it, all well and good. If they don't, we're stuffed. Luckily, the vast majority of students can read by the start of Year 7, even if they say they can't. But being able to read and being able to access the kind of material required to be academically successful are [...]
Some questions for the College of Teaching
So, plans for the College of Teachers are gathering pace. It increasingly looks like it's going to be a thing, whether teachers want it or not. I'm not against a College per se, but I do have some questions which I think need answering before we go too much further or invest any more than the £5 million the government has already handed over. 1. What is it actually for? [...]
The Capital Letter Problem Part 2: Pressure and release
In my last post I defined what I'm calling The Capital Letter Problem and set out some of its causes. Briefly, children pick up and embed bad habits when writing and, although they often know what should be done, they'll revert to what's been practised when under any kind of pressure. One solution could be to take a lesson from the world of horse training. Horse trainer Linda Parelli talks about the [...]
The Capital Letter Problem – Part 1
I have almost never met a secondary age child who doesn't conceptually understand how to use a capital letter.* But, you'd never know. Students regularly hand in work liberally sprinkled with missing - or extraneous - capitals and conscientious teachers spend hours circling the errors and patiently explaining why proper nouns and words at the beginning of a new sentence need capitals. In return, students say, "I know. It's just [...]
On report
Most of the schools I've taught in have operated some sort of 'on report' system for poorly behaved students. The idea is said poor behaved student presents his or her report card to teachers at the beginning of each lesson and the teacher records how satisfied they are with the behaviour exhibited in the lesson. Usually, the teacher will have to score the students behaviour, punctuality and sundry other qualities out [...]
Five things every new teacher needs to know about behaviour management
Managing students' behaviour can be the most terrifying aspect of becoming a teacher. Although it's the nightmare scenarios of being told to eff off on your first day, or having a chair hurled at your head that tend to keep new teachers awake at nights, these are - in most schools - relatively rare events. More often than not it's the small stuff that undermines lessons and erodes the best [...]
Should students be punished for poor behaviour?
The following blog was written for Teachers Register - the online solution to supply teaching. Punishment is a bit of a dirty word for many teachers. There often seems to be a presumption that children are naturally good and that any attempt to control or impede their impulses is somehow akin to child abuse. I’ve seen enough cruelty and cynicism from children to inure me against the belief that being [...]
Praise for #PsychBook
My new book, co-written with the quite marvellous Nick Rose, has landed. What Every Teacher Needs to Know About Psychology is a whistle-stop tour of what we consider to be the most useful and important psychological principles teachers ought to be aware of. In case you're wondering whether it's for you, maybe you'll find the following opinions persuasive: This is a must-read book for every beginning teacher. And even the [...]
What do new teachers need to know about behaviour management?
Full disclosure: this article appeared first on the Teachers Register blog. Teachers Register is an online solution for schools needing supply teachers without wanting the hassle of going through a supply agency. You can follow them on Twitter here. When I first resolved to train as a teacher – and worse still, a secondary school teacher – everyone I informed of this momentous decision would stare at me aghast and ask, [...]
Developing expertise #5 Explore connections
This is the fifth post in this series detailing ways teachers might go about training their intuition in order to make better judgements and acquire real expertise. You can read the previous posts here. We should always be on the lookout for similarities, analogous situations and anything which reminds us of other areas of our practice. When we conscious build on the similarities we spot we can explore why they’re [...]
Robert Coe’s foreword for #PsychBook
Right. It's done. What Every Teacher Needs to Know About Psychology is off to the printers tomorrow and should be available in the next few weeks. It's always a tense time when what you've written is exposed to the full glare of real readers. You never really know what the reaction will be like, but it's been very encouraging to have secured Professor Rob Coe's services to write a brief foreword. If [...]
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