In lockdown I’ve tried to live by the mantra everything you do now, try to make sure it is of use when “normality” returns. With this in mind I have been going through the Biology SLOP booklets and made some changes to the originals Some changes that have been made are: Proof reading Slight reduction…
KS3 Mastery booklets
Below are links to download the majority of our KS3 booklets we used this year. These were incredibly helpful in supporting non-specialist teachers, disadvantaged students and improving the amount of reading in science lessons. They are varied in nature as they were written by a wide range of staff and also show a progression in…
The evolution of a presentation: How to maximise students attention in online lessons
I was asked to deliver some CPD on planning for the online lesson environment. It was about how best to direct a student’s attention to the relevant areas. I made this powerpoint that illustrates the ideas with a few examples based on an old SoW I had for Alevel physics. This blog gives a little…
Accountability, Servant Leadership and the Feckless Teacher.
Over the last month or so I have been mulling over the role of servant leaders in a school context, ideas also addressed in the most recent issue of IMPACT magazine from the Chartered College of Teachers,which includes an article on different leadership approaches and equity of career progression. At my school we have established…
Demand characteristics: Why remote learning may allow us to finally see what actually happens in lessons.
Determining the quality of teaching in a department is a vital and challenging part of every school leader’s job. This has had a recent twist with the move towards remote education and live lessons. Quality assurance is a difficult thing to get right, we often put too much emphasis on metrics and not enough emphasis…
Sequencing in GCSE Biology: Teaching Evolution
I started to read The Ape that Understood the Universe by Steve Stewart-Williams and it got me thinking about the teaching of evolution. I posted a quick survey on twitter because it occurred to me that the sequencing of ecology and evolution is quite varied. In this blog I want to discuss the various ways…
Formative Forms
I’ve written this blog to share the strategy we are using to facilitate whole-class feedback and formative assessment for our students. Obviously this has a science context, but should be applicable to most subjects with long-answer questions. You might already be doing this, or your own version of it, but hopefully you’ll find some or…
How Behaviour Spreads: Applying the science of complex contagions to CPD
My summer reading book this year was the interestingly titled ‘How Behaviour Spreads’ by Damon Centola. It’s an account of a decade worth of work and goes into detail about why most of the research and assumptions made about how behaviour is spread are wrong in most situations. I was fascinated by the ideas and…
The problem with staggered start times in primary schools by years or classes.
The government has suggested the schools stagger the start and end of the day to reduce the number of people congregating around the school entrance. Schools, desperate for guidance and support from a pathetically ill-equipped DfE, have taken this on board and most schools have some sort of staggering to the day. They also do…
Working for Oak
I am writing this as I finish my final day of Oak National Academy lessons. I have made 25 lessons in 15 days and my brain is a bit mushy. I thought as it is, hopefully, a one-of-a-kind type event I would just write down some thoughts and feelings on the experience. Getting asked to…
Setting students: What do we mean by ‘that bottom set feeling’?
There has been a recent discussion around the setting, or streaming, of students on twitter. This tweet by Dylan Wiliam seems to give a slight nudge towards mixed ability favouring less able students. Some people are very much in favour of sets. The use of rank order as a tool to make the setting process…
