There is lots to know about the brilliantly complex act of teaching and learning. Here is my list of 10 things to know in the plainest terms possible: 1. Pupils knowing stuff helps them to learn more stuff (background knowledge). 2. It is effective and efficient to explicitly teach pupils the stuff (explicit instruction). 3. …
Year after the year, the same pressures attend exam revision. Each year teachers try the old favourites, alongside a few new revision strategies to keep our students interested. Happily, we now have a wealth of evidence to support some revision strategies over others as we approach the revision stretch. We know that students are not the …
It is exam results week and teachers all over England will be picking through the remnants of their students’ results – their successes and failures. My thoughts come to one of the mainstay strategies that correlate with exam success. That dull and nagging pain: revision. We know that a world of knowledge is now within reach …
A quick question: “How many animals of each kind did Moses bring onto the Ark?” Did you get it right? Two. Of course. Er, not quite. If you didn’t notice already, there is a fundamental error evident in the question. The answer is zero. Noah was at the helm of the Ark, not Moses. This …
In the last couple of years I have become more interested in the use of multiple choice questions. I had never really used them with any regularity and considered them a rather limited American idiosyncrasy. My first foray into exploring them, and their use, was sparked by Dylan Wiliam’s use of ‘hinge point questions‘. As …
Multiple Choice Questions: A) Use regularly B) Don’t use Read More »
(Apologies if you we’re expecting an album full of images that have students leaping holding their GCSE certificates – I think we have had enough of those this week!) In the midst of the media melee about exam standards, results fervour and what is seemingly an unwinnable battle for teachers and school leaders to succeed …
