Trying to apply educational research to students of all abilities and backgrounds
Me: What is an alkali? Student: It turns a indicator purple Me: That's right it is a substance with a pH above 7 that turns universal indicator blue or purple. This is an example of a teacher ‘rounding up’ a student's answer. The student's answer wasn’t wrong, it just wasn’t the completely right answer for... Continue Reading →
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom (the new staff were wise to join you), it was the age of foolishness (for those that left your incredible team), It was the epoch of ….. Ok I'll stop with this tedious Dickensian intro. Every once... Continue Reading →
One of the best parts of my job is visiting lessons. Lesson observations are a funny thing because they are always trying to achieve two things: They are trying to be developmental. They are trying to complete quality assurance processes. In Middle Leadership Mastery I made a partial case for separating these two processes. While... Continue Reading →
When I was appointed as the Lead Practitioner for our school in January my first job was to create a shared language for our schools teaching and learning policy. A lot had been achieved from September to January by the Assistant Principal in charge of Teaching and Learning; there had been a push on consistency... Continue Reading →
We had some friends over a few weeks ago and the conversation ultimately drifted towards education. They have a daughter who is in Yr 8 at the highest performing school within 15 miles of my house. It’s a faith school and also runs its own teaching alliance SCITT thingy. It has been outstanding in Ofsted... Continue Reading →
A teacher's time is education's most vital resource. In this series of blogs I explore some of the common aspects of classroom practice, give my opinion and what works and suggest some reasons why other things might not be worth our time. The aim is to share what I think are the most time efficient... Continue Reading →
Early on in my Head of Science career I spent a whole year with an action plan built around growth mindset theory. Although I spent a long time campaigning for my school to adopt it and not make it a series of posters about ‘FAIL = First Attempt At Learning’ and categorising thoughts as being... Continue Reading →
I was working with our head of RE recently. I was videoing his routine for stopping the class, which I had been told was very successful. When he wanted to stop his class discussion he would simply say "Silence in, three…two…one…now empty hands and track me." Brilliant! By Jacek Dylag https://unsplash.com/@dylu This is a back pocket... Continue Reading →
No Opt Out is part of the excellent Teach Like a Champion questioning flow that is used all the time. The combination of Cold call, wait time, right is right and no opt out is dynamite at increasing the think ratio in the classroom and helping students learn more. Here is a typical quick version:... Continue Reading →
OnePlus Nord. Our phone of choice Why film lessons? Recording videos is great, but also its totally cringe. I can vividly recall watching back my 10 minute explanation of the Bernoulli principle during my PGCE 20 years ago. The overuse of ‘yeah’ and my nervous rocking side to side. Aside from the embarrassment, filming yourself... Continue Reading →
Reflections on Education 