Livy living below the line
It's been some time since my last post and, sadly perhaps, this one has little to do with education. Instead it's a plea for support. From today Rosie and I along with our daughters (Olivia, aged 9 and Maddie, aged 7) will be living below the poverty line for 5 days to raise money for Oxfam and Action Against Hunger, and also to raise awareness of the fact that many folk just [...]
Mind your language – a language based approach to pedagogy
The most astonishing example of hyperbole ever! As the chap heading up Literacy at my school, I've been doing a lot of reading and thinking around the subject over the past year. I've become particularly interested in the need for oral language to develop written language and have been working with subject leaders to determine how students can think, speak and write like subject specialists. Kelly Hawkins, the [...]
Redesigning a curriculum
Effective reform must start with the understanding that the curriculum is the central focus and the central business of schools. Effective curricula are the sina que non of the system that is capable of delivering a quality education to all kids. Siegfried Engelmann At the start of the year I foolishly asked what the good people of Twitter would like me to write about. The message came back, loud and [...]
Building evidence into education
Does he look happy? Today I got to rub shoulders with the great and the good at Bethnal Green Academy (second most improved school in the land, dontcha know?) for the Teach First sponsored launch of Ben Goldacre's thoughts on Building Evidence into Education. I somehow found myself on a guest list that included Michael Gove, Kevan Collins, chief executive of the EEF and sundry academics and educational big wigs. Fortunately [...]
The Grand Unified Theory of Mastery
Is this all you need to know about motivation, learning and professional development? No, probably not. But, it is a beguilingly complete way of tying together many of the theories which have baffled and bedevilled me over the past few years. Here they all are, neatly and beautifully packaged for your convenience. I love the fact that Pete Jones (@Pekabelo) has designed this as a tube map as it resonates with an [...]
Pedagoo London presentation
Last weekend I was invited to Pedagoo London at the Institute of Education to provoke all and sundry with my rambling thoughts on how teachers can behave in lessons if they want to be judged 'outstanding'. I don't claim that this is in anyway the most important part of what we do, but it is a huge area of stress for many, and something which is regularly over complicated by [...]
Grit vs Flow – what's better for learning?
At least it wasn't Brain Gym! Bugger! Having just put up a new classroom display exhorting the benefits of 'flow' and using the idea in training materials, I have just had this thrust in front of my slack jawed face by my new bête noire, Alex Quigley! (NB: this is not true - Alex is a thoroughly decent chap, and a man I admire greatly.) I've been fascinated [...]
A reader's view on the teaching profession
This post was sent to me in response to yesterday's post by an NQT considering leaving teaching and wishing to remain anonymous. Why do so many teachers leave the profession? About me: I am 26 next week. I finished my PGCE in July 2012, after spending 5 years working as Teaching Assistant whilst I did a degree with the Open University. I have worked both professionally and voluntarily as a football [...]
Why do so many teachers leave teaching?
Apparently 50% of teachers leave the profession within their first 5 years. I've heard this statistic bandied about for quite a while, and while you can argue the exact figure back and forth a bit (some estimates put the figure at 40%) either way it's a bloody big number. Here's another perspective: 404,600 fully trained teachers under the age of 60 are no longer teaching, compared to around half [...]
The effect of affect
For those of us fortunate enough to be literate, the whole idea of Literacy in schools can seem bewilderingly over complicated. Something that comes to us as naturally as breathing can hardly require all the fuss and bother devoted to it, surely? Reading and writing can appear so straightforward that there must be something wrong with those who struggle. But, if we're able to resist the temptation to label those [...]
The problem with progress Part 3: Designing lessons for learning
Over my last couple of posts I've suggested that you can't see learning in lessons, you can only infer it from students' performance. This means that as a teacher, when you get students to respond to exit passes, signal with traffic lights and otherwise engage in formative assessment what you see are merely cued responses to stimuli. What I mean by that is that the tasks we set students to [...]
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