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. …
The school classroom is an amazing place. It is simultaneously filled with dazzling complexity and profound simplicity. It is at once driven by reassuring routines and constant surprises. As all pupils return to classrooms from the vagaries of the third lockdown this coming week, it will time for teachers to resume running the room and …
(This blog first appeared on the Huntington Research School blog – take a look HERE for more. You can also sign up to the monthly newsletter HERE.) January is a time for new resolutions and no little resolve. Join the gym, read some books, mark the schoolwork on time. For the busy teacher, perhaps …
What makes research evidence useful for teachers? Read More »
Teachers share many of the same hopes and fears. As much as we all yearn for the long summer holiday, we all loath the inevitable onset of September. The nightmare of our classroom in chaos has all beset us all, like Anthony Perkins hacking at our shower curtain, from the callow NQT to the hardened …
I have written a countless number of essays. At school, university, and back at school again, showing my students how to do it. In my fourteen years teaching I must have modelled hundreds of essays. I have likely set and assessed thousands of the blighters. My go-to strategy has always been to model the essay …
You can almost smell the burning indignation of Daily Mail readers as they read the following story on ‘Duvet Days’ for teachers. “Lessons in Laziness from lie-in teachers” is the war-cry. If you dare, take a look below the line at the comments, and wade through a sea of stereotype-laden opprobrium. Bloody lazy teachers, eh? Now, …
This last month, the Department for Education, the teaching unions and OFSTED united. Yes, you heard me right. The topic that saw this unique collaboration: teacher workload. The recruitment and retention issue faced by schools is meeting a demographic boom. Add that to stagnant school budgets and a deeply embedded accountability culture that sees compliance …
