For those of you who are interested, here are the top 10 most viewed posts on my blog during 2019

  1. Closing the language gap: Building vocabulary (16th November 2014) It’s a bit of a puzzler why a post written 5 years ago is proving so popular but I can only imagine anxious teachers are looking for Alex Quigley’s wildly popular book are are somehow stumbling onto this post.
  2. How do we know pupils are making progress? Part 1 The madness of flightpaths (23rd March) The first of a four part series about how we might go about stating with any degree of confidence whether pupils are in fact making the kind of progress we think they are. Everyone seems to hate flightpaths and so this post did surprisingly well. Needless to say, the following three posts in which various solutions are considered were largely ignored.
  3. Three animated films about learning (9th April) This is basically a link to the BBC Bitesize page which hosts a series of films I collaborated on. Apologies to international readers: all BBC content is  geolocked and unavailable outside the UK.
  4. Why ‘just reading’ might make more of a difference than teaching reading (22nd June) A peep at a promising study which suggests reading novels makes massively more difference to children’s progress in reading than being taught  comprehension skills.
  5. Is reading comprehension even a thing? (6th October) In which I cast doubt on the notion that reading comprehension is anything more than decoding skill plus language comprehension.
  6. The curriculum: intent, implementation and impact (24th July) A very brief precis of what Ofsted’s ‘3 Is’ actually mean.
  7. How to observe a lesson (11th October 2016) Another oldie. Again, not at all sure why this continues to do good business.
  8. What do Ofsted reports reveal about the way schools are being inspected under the new framework? (17th October) Exactly what the title suggests: by reviewing a sample of reports written under Ofsted new inspection framework I offer some common themes that appear to be preoccupying inspectors.
  9. What works best for children with SEND works best for all children (18th November) I’m particularly gratified that this post got so many hits. Simply put, if teachers understand how to teach the most disadvantaged children they can be confident that these approaches will be effective with all students.
  10. Skill = knowledge + practice (11th January) In which I offer a definition of ‘skill’ that makes it clear that teachers can only teach knowledge; skill is acquired through students’ practice.

Thank you for reading and I look forward to further discussions in 2020.