Trying to apply educational research to students of all abilities and backgrounds
Whole class feedback is a technique used to replace standard written feedback in books. It has a number of advantages to written comments, including the time it takes to complete. If you go online and look for whole class feedback, WCF, sheets you find a number of proformas of various styles like below I feel... Continue Reading →
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 was my starting point.... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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 readingSlight reduction in... Continue Reading →
I've recently been reading "Why don't children like school?" by the incredibly insightful Professor Daniel T. Willingham. It's amazing! I wish I had read it years ago. While there are lots of ideas that I am now familiar with, through CogSciSci and reading other books and blogs, it's great to read Professor Willingham's perspective on... Continue Reading →
Here is where you will find all my Biology GCSE SLOP booklets. I've taken the excellent work done by a large group of biology teachers and updated them to include: More questions (over 100 in each booklet)More maths in biology (graphs, percentage increases, standard form etc..)More literacy support (refutation texts , graphic organisers)Interleaving from prior... Continue Reading →
Here is a blog to share my presentation from Friday's CogSciSci conference at The Westminster School. At the end you can get access to my presentation if you want to share the ideas within your department. The goal-free approach in some ways is the nucleation point of cognitive load theory. Whilst Sweller et al. published... Continue Reading →
During discussion with Bob Pritchard and Chris Baker about advice given to trainee teachers, I remembered a number of lesson ideas from way back that, through the lens of hindsight, now seem like a complete waste of time. Currently, there is lots of variation in what trainee teachers get told about what to prioritise in... Continue Reading →
Reflections on Education 