It is decades since Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam opened up the ‘Black Box’ to reveal the crucial importance of assessment as learning, but it would appear the messages from said box were not heeded. In each decade since, the topic of assessment has been consumed by the fiery debate of high stakes testing, accountability …
Thinking about better assessment is not always at the forefront of the mind of a busy English teacher. We are so hassled by marking, planning and well, teaching lots, that we keep our nose to the marking grindstone and, well…just keep on going. More recently, I have been trying to consider how to improve as …
Since 2012, I have written numerous posts about feedback and marking. This is no surprise given our school system has been seemingly addicted to making ‘progress’ visible, with feedback becoming a quick fix for all our ills. Of course, feedback is richly complex, like most things in the classroom, so I thought it may prove …
“The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify … into every corner of our minds.” John Maynard Keynes Knowledge is power, without doubt. What is an education if not the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. And yet, we should be mindful of the rather …
English teachers are a privileged lot. Of course, there is the poetry, the novels, the discussion, debate, philosophy, the odd spelling, the plays, the spell-binding craft of writing and the essential power of reading. Well, not only all that stuff – we also have some great online resources and bloggers. This compilation is an updated …
This month I wrote an article for Teach Secondary on a topic dear to my heart – teacher explanations. If you are interested then you can give the article a look here: Infectious Explanations Teach Secondary Article. We attribute too much of teaching to supposedly ‘natural’ qualities – like how we individually, uniquely convey an …
Infectious Explanations – Teach Secondary Article Read More »
Does a steepling pile of marking like this loom large in your nightmares? The effect of good quality written feedback is one of those few constants that most teachers can agree has a positive impact on our students’ learning. With this universal truth acknowledged, we create assessment policies and armies of teachers scratch away in the books of …
