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Awards season

2011-11-19T22:28:25+00:00November 19th, 2011|Featured|

Being as I'm still very new to this blogging game (was it only July I made my first post?) I had no idea there were awards for it, let alone awards for educational blogging. Who knew? Well, apparently lots of people knew: the Edublogs Awards have been going on since 2004. I've only been alerted to this thanks to Kristian Stills generous nomination of the The Learning Spy. Which is lovely. But before I getting too carried away practising acceptance speeches, I thought that this would be a fine opportunity to do a bit of nominating myself. So, my nomination for [...]

End of term

2011-10-24T01:01:25+01:00October 24th, 2011|Featured|

Term 1 is always far more exhausting than I expect it to be. Some of the highlights from last term include meeting some cracking education types including Ian Gilbert, Phil Beadle and Jim Roberson; being published by The Guardian; completing day 1 of the Critical Skills Programme; Compering my school's awards evening and attending my first ever TeachMeet. But what's had the most impact on my teaching in recent months? Easy: keeping up the blog. Firstly, it's been a fantastic way to record my own musings and meanderings. In the past I'd teach a great lesson or think something really profound [...]

Easy vs Hard

2011-09-16T18:39:45+01:00September 16th, 2011|Featured, learning|

We choose to do these things not because they are easy but because they are hard. - JFK We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. - Aristotle A teachers' job is not to make work easy. It is to make it difficult. If you are not challenged, you do not make mistakes. If you do not make mistakes, feedback is useless. - John Hattie - Visible Learning Our attitude to effort is embedded in our language: easy does it, hard luck, easy on the eye, don't take it so hard. Why is it that [...]

Knowledge or skills?

2013-07-20T12:29:52+01:00September 11th, 2011|Featured|

Skills, knowledge, who cares?  I'm a huge fan of the implementation of Personal Learning and Thinking Skills as part of the English National Curriculum and feel confused and concerned about the current government's stance on knowledge & skills. see here for an example. Last week I had a really thought provoking conversation on this subject with Cristina Milos (@surreallyno) on Twitter which I think unpicks some of the issues: CM: When teenagers can't locate a country on the map, "facts" are suddenly important. Preaching "skills" before /or/ vs. "knowledge" is silly. Me: Is it? The fact that Poland is east of Germany tells us little, [...]

What's the point of homework?

2011-09-04T21:07:16+01:00September 4th, 2011|Featured|

Father: What's all those books then?Son: That's my homework dad.Father: You know what son, if they can't teach you all the stuff you need to know during the day, they can't be very good at their jobs can they? How To Teach p170 Homework. The word clangs with leaden dread, doesn't it? I hated it when I was a kid and I'm not too keen now I'm a teacher. Parents seem very keen on it and are quick to let schools know if an insufficient quantity of it is being sent home on a daily basis. Clearly, this is one potential [...]

Is the starter finished?

2011-09-03T22:15:56+01:00September 3rd, 2011|Featured|

For as long as I've been teaching (12 years) the received wisdom on the 'right' way to teach is to deliver a three, then four (or even five) part lesson: starter, guided bit where teacher is allowed to talk, main course and pudding. Sorry, too juvenile to resist. Last of the four, but in no way the least, is of course the plenary. There's lots I could say about the efficacy of this structure, but broadly speaking I'm not too concerned: yes it may have been a shot across the bows of the professionalism of teachers, but it's certainly helped to [...]

100 Word Challenge entry

2011-07-21T18:31:55+01:00July 21st, 2011|Featured|

This is my attempt at Julia Skinner's 100 word challenge. Be gentle with me. Bronzed Tanned. Weather-beaten. Sun-kissed. Interesting that a bunch of pallid, over-coated islanders should so worship the sun. Or maybe not so interesting. We don’t get enough of it perhaps to feel complacent. Bronzed has always seemed such a heroic ideal. Not only because statues of soldiers are routinely cast in the stuff, but because of the Bronze Age heroes I lapped up as a kid: Achilles, Odysseus, Agamemnon. For me, a particularly pale specimen, the reality of spending time in the sun is very far [...]

What's the point of lesson observations?

2011-07-17T11:35:16+01:00July 17th, 2011|Featured|

I feel I need to start by saying that I am not questioning the need for lesson observations. They're a crucial part of developing our professional practice and ensure T&L is quality assured. No, what this post is really concerned with is asking what we hope to achieve by observing teachers. For some time now I have been musing on the purpose of lesson observations  as well as considering new ways to encourage staff to develop their teaching practice. This has been merrily percolating at the back of my brain for some time but has now, I hope, turned into something a [...]

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