A request: Have you experienced any craziness in your school?
If there's something you really want to believe, that's what you should question the most. Penn Jillette (Penn & Teller) So. I've started work on my next book, provisionally (and provocatively) entitled, Why Everything You've Been Told About Teaching Is Wrong. Contrary to expectations I want to make is fair-minded and as lacking in ideological slant as I'm able. To achieve this I need your help. The chapter I'm currently [...]
A horror story: Does Ofsted get it wrong again?
Following my the post earlier in the week on the fact that Ofsted inspectors seemingly continue to break the rule with impunity, a number of people got in touch with similar tales of woe. It certainly seems that a lot of teachers seem to be experiencing inspectors flouting the very clear instructions in the new April 2014 edition of the Inspection Handbook. Maybe someone should keep some sort of database of these [...]
A new twist on Slow Writing
Since first writing about Slow Writing back in May 2012 the original post has had almost 12,000 views and I've received regular emails and tweets from teachers who have been inspired to use and adapt what is in essence an incredibly simple idea. Last week I got just such an email from primary teacher, Michael Lomas. His tweak is so simple and so good I thought I should share it with you. Just thought I would fire off [...]
Ofsted inspectors continue to do whatever they like
A few days a go after reading and retweeting this blog post from @cazzypot on the ongoing vagaries and inconsistencies of Ofsted, A head of MFL at a school in Hounslow got in touch to let me know how dissatisfied she was were here recent experience of the inspectorate. What follows is an edited version of the email she sent me. Ofsted visited my new school in April this year, a week after they had [...]
This is what I want
In the past few days I've told you what I think and a little bit about who I am. This post outlines the role I'd ideally like. Choosing to leave the classroom has had some surprising consequences. It was very flattering that my local paper wanted to write about the fact the blog won an award, but look at that headline! I'm not at all sure how I feel about being an 'ex-teacher'. [...]
This is who I am
This post was written at the behest of Rory Gallagher (@EddieKayshun) who assured me that some people might find it interesting to know a little more about my background. He has persuaded all sorts of fascinating teachers to share their stories on his marvellous Who I Am, What I Do site. I recommend you check it out. My experience of school was troubled. It took me a long time to [...]
Some pictures and reviews of #litbook
Many thanks to all the people who have kindly been in touch to tell me their long-awaited copies of The Secret of Literacy have arrived; I hope you find it useful and enjoyable. If you do like it, please don't underestimate how grateful I'll be for a positive review on Amazon (Many thanks to D Hewitson for the first 5 star review.) If you'd like to send me a picture of [...]
This is what I think
I love a good aphorism, and I also like lists. I keep being asked what I think about stuff so, in the spirit of clarity, here's a list of some of the things I think about education: Behaviour Getting behaviour right is the top priority for schools; when that's cracked everything else will be possible. Until it's cracked, nothing will work well. Blaming teachers for the failure of a school to [...]
Squaring the circle: can learning be easy and hard?
Regular readers will know I've been ploughing a furrow on this question for quite a while now. Last June I synthesised my thinking in this post: Deliberately difficult – why it’s better to make learning harder. For those of you who might be unfamiliar with the arguments, I'll summarise them briefly: - Learning is different from performance (the definition of learning I'm using here is the long-term retention and transfer of knowledge and [...]
3 reasons why you should read The Secret of Literacy
This is, unashamedly, a sales pitch for my new book, The Secret of Literacy: making the implicit explicit which should be available in the next few days. Apologies if such blatant self-promotion offends your sensibilities, but do bear with me; it won't be a hard sell. Who's the book for? Teachers. All teachers. It's definitely not aimed at English teachers, although I would hope they'll find it useful. Neither is it aimed at [...]
Intuition vs evidence: the power of prediction
I wrote earlier in the week about why, despite it's limitations, research is better than a hunch. Since then, I've been reading Daniel Willingham's article on Real Clear Education; he says that it's not that people are stupid but that science is hard. He refers to the nobel prize winning physicist Carl Weiman whose interest in science education came from many years of working closely with physics undergraduates and observing that "their success in [...]
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