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The shocking mediation of Ofsted criteria by 'rogue' inspectors

There's a lot said and written about what Ofsted do and don't want to see in lessons, and it turns out a lot of it is nonsense. Fortunately though we have Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector, saying all kinds of sensible things: Ofsted should be wary of trying to prescribe a particular style of teaching, whether it be a three part lesson; an insistence that there should be a balance between teacher led activities and independent learning, or that the lesson should start with aims and objectives with a plenary at the end. We should be wary of too much prescription. [...]

2013-11-10T17:06:41+00:00November 10th, 2013|training|

It’s not what you know… oh, hang on: it IS what you know!

I'm fed up of people who should know better saying they're bored with the false dichotomy of skills versus knowledge. The knowledge vs skills debate is always worth having because it conceals a more fundamental disagreement (a real dichotomy, if you will) about what's most important. Let's agree that no one is actually advocating that no knowledge is taught. I'm sure this is true. But saying that knowledge is 'just a foundation for higher order thinking' isn't good enough either. This picture from Joe Kirby's blog sums it up for me: Analysis, application, evaluation and all the rest are the merely the [...]

2018-09-24T23:37:12+01:00November 9th, 2013|learning|

Better analysis: seeing the wood AND the trees

I've been exploring better ways to teach analysis and evaluation for some time now. A few years ago I stumbled on the idea of zooming in and out which has gone viral and made its way into the teaching zeitgeist. In case you've managed to miss it, the basic premise is that terms like analysis are pretty slippery and hard to tie down and benefit from being explained in a more concrete way. When we read a text, or look at an image, we see it as a distinct whole. We just see the tree. And 'the tree' is hard to [...]

2013-12-08T01:50:44+00:00November 3rd, 2013|literacy|

What is (or isn't) language doing in PGCE?

After yesterday's post on the subject of how to improve the PGCE, Lee Donaghy tweeted me to point out that I had neglected to mention the importance of trainee teachers learning knowledge about language, and specifically how language works in the particular subject in which they are training. He suggested writing a guest blog on this topic to add to my original blog and, naturally, I agreed. If you're unclear who Lee is I why I would jump at the chance of putting up a guest post from him, have a quick look at his blog, What’s language doing here? Then, when you've appreciated [...]

2013-10-28T09:14:44+00:00October 28th, 2013|literacy, training|

The times they are a changin': how can we improve the PGCE?

Back in the dim and distant mists of time when I embarked on my Post-graduate Certificate in Education, there was no other way to train as a teacher. Much of my training was interesting and I largely enjoyed the subject specific content. But the generic stuff on professional practice was pretty awful and has largely been expunged from memory. I felt hopelessly unprepared for my first teaching practice, but then I expect that's true of most or many, but despite lots of classroom experience, lectures and having written a dissertation I was still hopelessly unprepared on being awarded QTS. I had [...]

2013-10-27T15:03:15+00:00October 27th, 2013|Featured, training|

Anything goes: Is there a right way to teach?

There's nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so. Shakespeare, Hamlet I read Joe Kirby's recent post on cognitive bias with interest because I've been pursuing a very similar line of enquiry. What if we're fooling ourselves? The wonderfully entertaining You Are Not So Smart by David Mcraney deals with many different varieties of self-delusion and makes excellent reading. But even armed with all this information, self-delusion is very hard to spot. One thing that's become clear to me is that I should be suspicious of my intuition. That said, I do try to open to criticism and new information [...]

2013-10-20T10:43:56+01:00October 20th, 2013|learning|

The art of beautifully crafted sentences

I came across this post on Doug Lemov's blog earlier today and instantly decided to rewrite my Year 8 lesson to make use of the ideas within. The idea is, like all good ideas, a very simple one: that pupils should be taught explicitly to construct beautiful sentences. Now, I like a good sentence as much as the next English teacher. Here's one of my all time favourites, courtesy of Sylvia Plath from The Bell Jar: The lawn was white with doctors. The sparse elegance of such an utterance fills me with delight and satisfaction; it communicates so much, so simply. [...]

2013-10-18T08:30:59+01:00October 17th, 2013|English, literacy, writing|

Making data meaningful: Pen Portraits

Most of what makes classrooms work is invisible. The activities that teachers and students enact are, by and large, irrelevant. I'm aware that this runs the risk of sounding like preposterous nonsense, but I think it's true. The here and now of lessons and classrooms is dependent on the routines and relationships that have been forged over time. If you're clear about what is and is not acceptable behaviour, firm and fair in applying consequences and provide meaningful feedback on how pupils' can improve it almost doesn't matter what you do in a lesson. And vice versa: if you neglect these things, no [...]

2013-10-13T19:39:53+01:00October 13th, 2013|leadership|

Are all difficulties desirable?

I was aghast to read an extract from Malcolm Gladwell's new book, David And Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits And The Art Of Battling Giants in The Guardian yesterday. Not because it's bad, but because it's the book I wanted to write! Or rather, it's not. The David & Goliath metaphor is intriguing, but not really what I'm interested in. What got my heart rate up was an oblique reference to Professor Bjork's work on 'desirable difficulties'. This extract from David and Goliath is, for the most part, about dyslexia. In it Gladwell contends that adversity creates conditions for surprising greatness: Conventional wisdom holds that a disadvantage is something that [...]

2013-10-05T11:07:37+01:00October 5th, 2013|Featured|

Ask not what's wrong with Twitter…

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. Matthew 7: 3-5 What's wrong with Twitter? Nothing. Not a damn thing. Twitter does what it does brilliantly and I for one am jolly grateful. There are few better ways to communicate with people; if you have something worth saying, it will find an audience. The draw back is the 140 character limit [...]

2013-09-29T10:28:26+01:00September 29th, 2013|blogging|

Is failure just a lack of practice?

Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho! You must learn to fail intelligently. Failing is one of the greatest arts in the world. One fails forward towards success.  Thomas Edison Show me a teacher who doesn’t fail every day and I’ll show you a teacher with low expectations for his or her students. Dylan Wiliam I've written a fair bit over the past couple of years on the need to allow pupils (and teachers) to fail, learn from their mistakes and do better. This ability to learn from mistakes is, along with [...]

2014-04-13T11:06:31+01:00September 28th, 2013|Featured, learning|

Hang on in there: could encouragement be more useful than praise?

Last week I expanded on some of my doubts about the concept of praise, particularly the current consensus that we should be going out of our way to praise effort. I concluded by saying, "no one would disagree with the power of a sincere compliment – the difficulty is in knowing the difference. Maybe we should start thinking about how best to encourage pupils to learn." I intended to spend the week considering the question of what to do instead, and then Tim Taylor wrote this summarising Alfie Kohn's advice on how to make sure praise is sincere and useful: A: Don’t praise people, only [...]

2013-09-27T21:59:27+01:00September 27th, 2013|learning|
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