Stress. How much is too much?
One possible solution? Like most teachers, I'll be back at school on Monday and already I've got the heeby jeebies. Apart from all the usual planning and preparation, controlled assessment folders for the new GCSE specification need final moderation. Every English department is in the same position; this is our first run through with new marking criteria and so much is riding on us getting these marks right. [...]
What to know: the importance of cultural capital
Let's face it, we need to know to stuff if we're going to have anything resembling a successful life. But what is it we need to know? As an English teacher I have a fair bit of fairly arcane knowledge that few others outside my profession and subject specialism would see as useful. Doctors know all kinds of stuff, and they save lives. Surely everything they know is vitally important? [...]
Are worksheets a waste of time?
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 attempting to use their wits to drive off the need to work. This provokes the ire of others (often teachers) who consider it character forming and good for them and I-had-to-do-it [...]
Say what? Reflecting on spoken language
The plus side to turning 40 http://xkcd.com/166/ Over the past few weeks I've been getting my Year 11s to analyse their idiolect for a Spoken Language controlled assessment as part of the specification for GCSE English Language . The task was to "Reflect on the way you speak including criticism made of it by adults". The Daily Mail (always an excellent source of vitriol and biased reportage) says [...]
Myths: what Ofsted want
With galling hypocrisy and seemingly no sense of irony, Ofsted have released their latest subject report for English snappily titled, Moving English Forward. The report is a step by step guide on how to suck eggs. Apparently, teachers should concentrate on engendering a passion for learning instead of worrying about all the waggle of passing exams! Who knew? Apart from its obvious interest to English specialists, there's stuff in here [...]
When independent learning meets high stakes success
I've been thinking: our Year 11 students have just had their results back for the January sitting of the English Language GCSE exam. Currently English is a modular course, and this accounts for 40% of their final grade. 70% of our cohort have already got the marks for at least a C grade and now we are mobilisling a phenomenal battery of resources to ensure that this figure rises to [...]
High Performers
The postman delivered High Performers - The Secrets of Successful Schools by Alistair Smith this week. For anyone who's not read it, the book contains bucket loads of wisdom and tons of practical advice on every single page. To tell the truth, I feel a little breathless about all the good stuff contained therein. Alistair took it upon himself to visit 20 high performing schools up and down the land and [...]
How should we teach reading?
A few months ago I posted a piece in which Roy Blatchford (founder of The National Education Trust) outlined his manifesto for ensuring that every child gets at least a C grade in English. But, reading is complex. So how exactly should we teach children to read? This vexing question is utmost in many teachers' minds and is tangled up in three separate issues: Decoding - the process of turning symbols [...]
Are teacher observations a waste of time?
"I never allow teachers or school leaders to visit classrooms to observe teachers; I allow them to observe only students". John Hattie (2012) I've been mulling this statement over for the past few weeks and it seems to boil down to this: are we interested in how teachers teach, or how students learn? It's become a truism in recent times to say that just because a teacher is teaching there [...]
Feedback: it's better to receive than to give
As every teacher ought to already know, feedback and formative assessment are the most powerful, most effective things you can be doing. This means we need to be taking every opportunity to let our students know, "where they are going, how they are going there and what they might go next." Obvious, isn't it? Well, maybe not. Here are a few interesting points I have gleaned about the effective use [...]
Learning objectives and why we need ’em
I remember the first time I saw a learning objective being used in a lesson. My school had just been placed into Special Measures and things were looking grim. I'd only joined the school a few months previously and was wondering how to get out. Then, at an INSET event organised to rally the troops I watched a video of David Gale (a maths teacher who tweets as @reflectivemaths) writing [...]
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