New Year's resolutions for teachers and school leaders
We have more ability than will power, and it is often an excuse to ourselves that we imagine that things are impossible. François de La Rochefoucauld It's a new year, with no mistakes. In the few days left of the Christmas break thoughts will inevitably turn to the term ahead and how we can do whatever it is we do better. Just in case you're not sure how to turn [...]
Annual report 2015
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 tyranny of some of the daft but pervasive ideas in education, the debate has become increasingly polarised. My writing seems to irritate and encourage in roughly equal measure and I fear I've gained [...]
December on The Learning Spy
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 their rather tawdry glory. 3rd December - Marking: What (some) Ofsted Inspectors (still) want An expression of frustration at the continued inability of some Ofsted inspectors to free their minds from the shackles of bias, prejudice and personal [...]
Phonics is not a cure for cancer
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. Does that mean antibiotics don't work? Of course not. If you're suffering from a bacterial infection like brucellosis then an antibiotic might well be effective. This, I hope, is straightforward. So if I conducted a piece of research which [...]
Only phonics? A reader replies to Michael Rosen Part 2
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 the only important aspect of teaching children to read. Indeed not. Take this comment from John Hodgson for example: No-one knowledgable in teaching the reading of English would deny the value of a grasp of characteristic letter-sound correspondences. This is not the [...]
Reading for pleasure: A reader replies to Michael Rosen Part 1
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 this statement: When children are deemed to be ‘not reading’ i.e. being unable to pass the Phonics Screening Check, some teachers are being asked to do more of the same, rather than do anything different, nor [...]
A roundup of my least popular posts of 2015
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 posts seem to get thousands of views whereas others are only read by a small but select group of loyal readers. Possibly this is because they're a bit crap, but, not to be defeated, [...]
My five favourite blogs of 2015
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 best writing and ideas the edublogging community has produced over the past year. There have been plenty of excellent contenders but on balance, these have been my five favourite education blogs [...]
On fragility: why systems fail
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 in English, hence the neologism, antifragile. If something fragile is damaged by chaos, stress and challenge and something resilient or robust is immune, then something possessing antifragility is enhanced. The best, perhaps only, way to thrive in an [...]
The most interesting books I read this year
For no particular reason other than that it's almost the years' end and making lists always seems appropriate as December draws to a close, and in no particular order, here are ten of the most interesting books I read over the course of 2015. Intelligence by Stuart Richie For anyone new to the study of intelligence, Richie's eminently readable little book is the perfect primer. In it he details exactly what [...]
Why I like ‘tick n flick’
It is vain to do with more what can be done with less. William of Ockham Tick n flick - the practice of flicking through students' exercise books and ticking to indicate that they have been read (or at least seen) is widely used as a pejorative term for the laziest type of marking undertaken only by the most feckless, morally bankrupt of teachers - generally gets a bad press. [...]
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