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Livy living below the line

It's been some time since my last post and, sadly perhaps, this one has little to do with education. Instead it's a plea for support. From today Rosie and I along with our daughters (Olivia, aged 9 and Maddie, aged 7) will be living below the poverty line for 5 days to raise money for Oxfam and Action Against Hunger, and also to raise awareness of the fact that many folk just don't get enough to eat. We thought very carefully about whether we should let the girls take part, but seeing as they're so keen we wanted to let them have the chance to [...]

2013-04-28T19:12:22+01:00April 28th, 2013|Featured|

Mind your language – a language based approach to pedagogy

The most astonishing example of hyperbole ever! As the chap heading up Literacy at my school, I've been doing a lot of reading and thinking around the subject over the past year. I've become particularly interested in the need for oral language to develop written language and have been working with subject leaders to determine how students can think, speak and write like subject specialists. Kelly Hawkins, the head of Art at Clevedon School, has been getting her students to 'think like artists' for some time and it seemed a natural extension to work with teachers to encourage students [...]

2013-07-21T07:55:36+01:00March 29th, 2013|Featured, learning, literacy|

Redesigning a curriculum

Effective reform must start with the understanding that the curriculum is the central focus and the central business of schools. Effective curricula are the sina que non of the system that is capable of delivering a quality education to all kids. Siegfried Engelmann At the start of the year I foolishly asked what the good people of Twitter would like me to write about. The message came back, loud and clear, that you wanted to know my thoughts on the Key Stage 3 curriculum. Well, whadda you know? Through my usual process of bathing in ideas until good and clean, I [...]

2013-12-03T09:25:15+00:00March 25th, 2013|English, Featured, learning, planning|

Building evidence into education

Does he look happy? Today I got to rub shoulders with the great and the good at Bethnal Green Academy (second most improved school in the land, dontcha know?) for the Teach First sponsored launch of Ben Goldacre's thoughts on Building Evidence into Education. I somehow found myself on a guest list that included Michael Gove, Kevan Collins, chief executive of the EEF and sundry academics and educational big wigs. Fortunately there were also a few familiar faces: I was joined by fellow rent-a-gob Tom Bennett who is an old hand at these sorts of affairs and handled himself with considerable savoir [...]

2013-03-14T14:27:40+00:00March 14th, 2013|Featured|

The Grand Unified Theory of Mastery

Is this all you need to know about motivation, learning and professional development? No, probably not. But, it is a beguilingly complete way of tying together many of the theories which have baffled and bedevilled me over the past few years. Here they all are, neatly and beautifully packaged for your convenience. I love the fact that Pete Jones (@Pekabelo) has designed this as a tube map as it resonates with an idea I read about recently about 'staying on the bus'. All too often in life we 'get off the bus' as soon as we get to some sort of destination. Rarely [...]

2013-07-19T22:30:51+01:00March 10th, 2013|Featured, learning|

Pedagoo London presentation

Last weekend I was invited to Pedagoo London at the Institute of Education to provoke all and sundry with my rambling thoughts on how teachers can behave in lessons if they want to be judged 'outstanding'. I don't claim that this is in anyway the most important part of what we do, but it is a huge area of stress for many, and something which is regularly over complicated by feckless school leaders and overpaid consultants. If you've ever been told that your lesson 'lacks sparkle' or been fobbed off due one boy in the corner coughing for a brief period, [...]

2018-07-23T10:18:07+01:00March 8th, 2013|Featured|

Grit vs Flow – what's better for learning?

At least it wasn't Brain Gym! Bugger! Having just put up a new classroom display exhorting the benefits of 'flow' and using the idea in training materials, I have just had this thrust in front of my slack jawed face by my new bête noire, Alex Quigley! (NB: this is not true - Alex is a thoroughly decent chap, and a man I admire greatly.) I've been fascinated by the idea of 'flow' since reading Mihály Csíkszentmihályi's book some years ago. The idea is that if you're totally immersed in the experience of performing a task you will perform it [...]

2013-03-04T23:14:42+00:00March 4th, 2013|Featured, myths|

A reader's view on the teaching profession

This post was sent to me in response to yesterday's post by an NQT considering leaving teaching and wishing to remain anonymous. Why do so many teachers leave the profession? About me: I am 26 next week. I finished my PGCE in July 2012, after spending 5 years working as Teaching Assistant whilst I did a degree with the Open University. I have worked both professionally and voluntarily as a football coach with children aged 5-16 years for over a decade now; I began coaching at 14 after a back injury stopped me from playing. I cannot speak for anyone but myself. [...]

2013-02-28T20:22:45+00:00February 28th, 2013|Featured|

Why do so many teachers leave teaching?

  Apparently 50% of  teachers leave the profession within their first 5 years. I've heard this statistic bandied about for quite a while, and while you can argue the exact figure back and forth a bit (some estimates put the figure at 40%) either way it's a bloody big number. Here's another perspective: 404,600 fully trained teachers under the age of 60 are no longer teaching, compared to around half a million still actively working in English and Welsh schools. So that's almost half of the qualified teachers in the country not actually teaching. And it's getting worse: some 47,700 teachers [...]

2013-10-20T11:28:31+01:00February 27th, 2013|Featured|

The effect of affect

For those of us fortunate enough to be literate, the whole idea of Literacy in schools can seem bewilderingly over complicated. Something that comes to us as naturally as breathing can hardly require all the fuss and bother devoted to it, surely? Reading and writing can appear so straightforward that there must be something wrong with those who struggle. But, if we're able to resist the temptation to label those with poor literacy as somehow deficient and thus attribute biological or social causes for their shortcomings, we might have more of a chance of addressing some of the real issues. One [...]

2021-07-26T09:39:36+01:00February 24th, 2013|learning, literacy|

The problem with progress Part 3: Designing lessons for learning

Over my last couple of posts I've suggested that you can't see learning in lessons, you can only infer it from students' performance. This means that as a teacher, when you get students to respond to exit passes, signal with traffic lights and otherwise engage in formative assessment what you see are merely cued responses to stimuli. What I mean by that is that the tasks we set students to check whether they've learned what we've taught only tell us how they are performing at that particular time and in those particular circumstances; they offer no indication whether the feckless buggers [...]

2014-05-25T18:20:25+01:00February 16th, 2013|Featured, learning, planning, SOLO|

The problem with progress Part 2: Designing a curriculum for learning

Can progress be both rapid and sustained? We start out with the aim of making the important measurable and end up making only the measurable important. Dylan Wiliam Does slow and steady win the race? 'Rapid and sustained progress' is Ofsted's key indictor for success. Schools across the land chase this chimera like demented puppies chasing their own tails. But just when when you think you've gripped it firmly between your slavering jaws, the damn thing changes and slips away. You see, the more I look into it, the more I'm convinced that progress cannot be both rapid and sustained. You cannot [...]

2021-11-19T09:27:05+00:00February 14th, 2013|Featured, leadership, learning, myths, planning|
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