This week we start looking inside (and as it happens, outside) the doors of our classrooms with an exploration of the routines we operate in our classes to support safe healthy relationships and to keep the focus on the learning. Today's routines are the macro ones,...
This week we get to hear what advice Bags gave the delegates during her conference presentation and we reflect on how to get the culture right in the teaching of boys. There are some new boys' voices too.
So we succeeded at putting on a conference that focussed our attention on Teaching Boys English, and by all accounts it was a real success. Gena and Chris chat about the messages of the event - including a few reasonably contentious points of view - until we were...
Our last episode attracted some really interesting feedback, so we've used that to cue us into this week's discussion. After setting out our stall last week with apocalyptic statistics about boys' education - we're now embarking on our mission to explore what we do,...
A quick interrogation of assessment outcomes for boys in New Zealand education renders some alarming results. Boys achievement is some 30% beneath that of their female counterparts in almost every measure you can come up with. HoDs of English Gena Bagley (Otago Boys'...
Presentation to the Sunday Times Festival of Education, exploring the "God in the Machine". The notion that it is through setting up a class environment that concentrates on the imperatives of authenticity and agency, the aspects of learning that we care about...
Presentation to the #i2ipartnership teachmeet, held on 24 October 2013
This journal entry was written as part of the first #blogsync, an initiative in the synchronisation of online journals by UK Educational professionals. The first shared topic was "The Universal Panacea? The number one shift in UK education I wish to see in my...
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 the teaching of reading, for which I entered the teaching...
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 ill-informed notions in and out of the...