blogging

Here are the 10 most viewed posts of last year. Only half of them were actually written last year and some of them are several years old. I reckon this must in part be due to the fact that there are so many links to some of my older posts knocking around on t'internet and so, because my views have changed, I've taken the opportunity to rewrite some of them fairly extensively. I wonder if you can guess which ones? 10. 5 things every new (secondary) teacher should know about reading (August 2016) 9 Bottom sets and the scourge of low-level disruption (November 2016) 8. Is growth [...]

Here follows a selection of some of what I consider to be my best posts of 2016. I've learned not to be surprised that what I think is my best writing is rarely appreciated by others and this is certainly reflected in the selection below; almost all of these posts went largely unnoticed by the reading public. In a desperate attempt to rectify this injustice I once again foist them before you for your consideration. January Can anyone teach? Well, that depends on what you think education is for - The role of the teacher is a continual battleground between the various [...]

Here follows my extremely partial take on some of the blog post I have most enjoyed reading this year Heather Fearn - Reading fluency and the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ My only continuing niggle with Heather's blog is that she stubbornly refuses to add a 'follow by email' widget and, seeing as I can't make head not tail of RSS feeds and the like, I often miss her posts much too often. That said, pretty much everything she writes is ace and I really should make more of an effort. This one, on the haphazard way reading is taught in secondary schools [...]

February was cold, dark, wet and miserable. Which probably explains why I go so much writing done. Here are all of my posts from lat month in one convenient digest. Learning about learning: What every teacher needs to know A report from the US National Council on Teacher Quality reveals the 'big six' strategies we should all know. More guff on creativity There really people who believe that being creative means you don't have to remember stuff! Reading difficulty is a teaching problem not an intelligence problem If a child leaves school unable to read it is the school's fault. Romanticism & the Enlightenment: Meta-beliefs in [...]

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 many new readers at the expense of alienating some old ones. For anyone who happens to be interested, here's the 2015 annual report on my blog produced by WordPress. As you [...]

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 preference. 3rd December - Why I ♥ blogging (and believe there is hope for Ofsted) An expression of satisfaction and relief that the upper echelons of Ofsted continue to see sense and strive mightily [...]

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, I'm hopeful that a roundup of some of the posts I most enjoyed writing but sank without a trace might do something to spark a modicum of interest.  1. A defence of [...]