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The problem with progress Part 1: learning vs performance

What's more important? Learning or progress? Take that progress! We want learning We've known since the publication of Ofsted's Moving English Forward in March last year that demonstrating progress is not the be all and end all of an inspector's judgments, but just in case anyone was in any doubt, Kev Bartle has forensically scoured Ofsted's Inspection Handbook and come to these damning conclusions. He unequivocally states that,"There is no such thing as progress within lessons. There is only learning" before going on to say: Even Ofsted (the big organisation but sadly not always the individual inspectors or inspection teams) realise that ‘progress’ [...]

2022-11-28T15:05:37+00:00February 12th, 2013|Featured, learning, myths|

Icebergs, taking risks & being outstanding

How do we recognise a great teacher, a great lesson or great teaching and learning? How do we know what we're seeing is outstanding? The sad truth is that often observers don't (or can't) see the wood for the trees. They see your planning, they see your interactions with a group of students and, hopefully, they see the evidence of impact in your students' books. But most of what goes into making your lessons finely crafted things of beauty are invisible. Observers only ever get to see the tip of the iceberg. If a writer of prose knows enough of [...]

2024-01-19T10:53:07+00:00February 11th, 2013|Featured, learning, planning, training|

Houston, we have influence: The Top 100 education blogs

I started writing this blog on the 11th July 2011 with the intention of recording all the thoughts I've always had about teaching and learning. In the past I'd amaze myself with how what seemed profound at the beginning of the week would become lost in the hurly burly of planning, marking and teaching. I wanted a place to stop and stare. I wanted a sounding board for all my wild, untamed ideas. And, I confess, I did want a bit of an audience as well. I wrote recently about the transformative effect Twitter has had on my career, and I'm [...]

2013-02-04T22:22:49+00:00February 4th, 2013|Featured|

Live Lesson Obs: Making lesson observations formative

You can push and prod people into something better than mediocrity, but you have to encourage excellence. David Lammy We've all experienced the dread and agony of formal lesson observations, haven't we? We've sweated blood over our preparations, filled in inch thick lesson plans and obsessed over meaningless details in our presentations. Or is that just me? A while back now I read something (I forget exactly what) by Phil Beadle which went along the lines of "Be brilliant and they'll forgive you anything." This nugget has rattled around in my stony heart ever since with the result that I've started [...]

2013-07-19T09:22:37+01:00February 3rd, 2013|Featured, leadership, learning|

Work scrutiny – What’s the point of marking books?

Opportunity makes a thief. – Francis Bacon I wrote recently about the differences between marking and feedback. In brief, and contrary to popular wisdom, they are not the same thing; feedback is universally agreed to be a good bet in teachers’ efforts to improve student outcomes whereas as marking appears to be almost entirely unsupported by evidence and neglected by researchers. Marking takes time Although there are some who dislike the use of the term opportunity cost being applied to education, there’s no getting away from the fact that whilst we may be able to renew all sorts of resources, time is always finite. [...]

2020-09-08T09:02:02+01:00January 26th, 2013|assessment, leadership|

Anatomy of an outstanding lesson

I'd want to make clear at the outset of this post that I no longer believe there is such a thing as an 'outstanding' lesson and would like to refer you to this post. Outstanding lessons are all alike; every unsatisfactory lesson is unsatisfactory in its own way. Leo Tolstoy (and me) It's all very well writing a book called The Perfect Ofsted English Lesson, but it does rather set you up for a fall. People expect you to be able to bang out Grade 1 lessons to order. Anything less than outstanding would be a bitter disappointment. I've reflected a number [...]

2014-03-15T18:37:34+00:00January 22nd, 2013|English, learning, planning|

A Universal Panacea? – my homage to Twitter

The number one shift in education I wish to see in my lifetime? In an effort to participate in the Blog Sync project coordinated by @Edutronic_Net I blithely signed up to write about whatever was agreed on as the months's suggested topic. Sadly for me, the subject was not one that's been sizzling up my sleeve for an opportunity to flare into life. In fact, I've really struggled to know what to say about this. Being somewhat cynical about the chicanery which goes on outside, above or below our classrooms, I am, I'm sorry to say, inherently suspicious of anything purporting [...]

2013-01-20T19:42:46+00:00January 20th, 2013|Featured|

Building challenge: differentiation that’s quick and works

UPDATE: These two posts represent my latest think on differentiation:  Is differentiation a zero-sum game? April 2015 Why do we overestimate the importance of differences? November 2014 Since having a good long think about differentiation some while back it doesn't keep me up at nights nearly as much as it used to. But this is still one of my most visited posts so clearly other folks continue to be troubled. I want to set out my stall early by saying that this is yet another of those troublesome topics which is far simpler than most teachers imagine. My bottom line is that mucking [...]

2017-01-02T15:16:55+00:00January 19th, 2013|English, learning, planning|

Effective group work

Just another example of effective groupwork OK. I have 3 points to make: Group work does not make us more creative and it does not make us work harder. Learning is social and effective group work (apparently) doubles the speed of students' learning. Almost all teaching in schools depends on a teacher's ability to create effective groups because, wait for it, classes are just large groups. Let's deal with each of these in a bit more detail. Firstly, as I've discussed before, when we try to work together to work towards a collective goal we get, what is known [...]

2013-11-27T19:42:46+00:00January 12th, 2013|behaviour, Featured, learning|

Building anticipation… How to get kids to look forward to your lessons without dumbing down

One of the banes of every teachers' life is that endless, whining chorus of, "Can we do something fun today?" The correct answer to this pitiful plea is of course that learning is always fun and that today's lesson, along with every other lesson, will contain the gift of knowledge. What could be more fun than that? But this isn't what they mean or what they want, is it? Sometimes, especially at the end of term, they're less subtle and straight for the jugular by asking if they can watch a film. (And they're not clamouring for Herzog or Kieślowski, are [...]

2014-06-03T18:56:55+01:00January 11th, 2013|English, Featured|

So, what *IS* the point of INSET days?

Every teacher needs to improve, not because they are not good enough, but because they can be even better. Dylan Wiliam, keynote to SSAT conference, December 2012 Back in August 2011, long before I ever thought I might one day be feeling guilty about being paid for going to another school and talking about teaching, I wrote this post asking what the point of an INSET day actually was. I didn't really answer the question. However, I did point out this: All too often the only requirement for staff  is that they sit and listen. Either to an expensive motivational guest speaker or [...]

2015-01-26T12:39:51+00:00January 6th, 2013|training|

How to get students to value writing

Sir, do we have to write in sentences? Yes, you bloody well do! Students do a lot of writing at school but, bless me, most of it's turgid stuff. In practically every lesson they're required to scribble stuff down in their excise books, even if it's only a learning objective and the date. Having spent a good deal of the past two terms observing lessons across the curriculum, I can safely say that most of the writing students do is an exercise in missed opportunities. And almost none of this writing is valued in any way other than for the content it contains. [...]

2013-11-07T09:10:11+00:00December 31st, 2012|literacy, writing|
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