Tag: Learning
What I do when the Government isn't watching.
An intrepid group of educators are headed off to Brighton to run a teachmeet on the fringes of the Labour Party conference, here is part of my contribution to the event – I’ll upload the …
Build a New English Department: Step One – The People
He aha te mea nui? He tangata. He tangata. He tangata. (What is the most important thing? It is people, it is people, it is people.) I start a new year in a new role, …
An Explanation: Romeo and Juliet – Fate and Interpretation
This month’s #blogsync calls for “an example of a great classroom explanation”. I must admit that I have thought twice about the following contribution as there’s a sense that it really does put me in the …
Four Successful Homework Strategies
Homework is one of the most fraught areas of secondary teaching. We know it’s important, its impact is visible and its routines don’t offend common sense. Yet in the daily reality of the classroom homework …
Presentation to Pedagoo London
This is the information that accompanied my two presentations to Pedagoo London on 2 March 2013. The event was a grass-roots un-conference run by teachers for our own professional development. It brought together a group …
Presentation to Teachmeet BETT: From Intention to Effect
In this presentation, delivered live to Teachmeet BETT 2013, I introduced the intentions behind the development of EDUTRONIC and then provide evidence, in the form of a snapshot of a single interaction with a Year 8 …
Tangled in the Scaffolding
Teaching writing is one of the greatest joys and challenges of the English domain. Along the way, you encounter, acquire and discard many approaches and strategies – but there are always some that stick. Unlike …
If Nothing Changes, Nothing Changes
Albert Einstein defined insanity as: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Yet, inescapably, the English education system ignores this logic, and repeats the same tired strategies and the same …
Build a Brilliant Teacher
When a teacher fails, it’s “mea culpa”; when we succeed, it’s “didn’t the students do well?” Something that struck me when listening to John Hattie speak at the recent London Festival of Education was his …