My journey to school each morning is mercifully short. Each day I follow the same habitual steps, with little variation beyond the odd song that rattles my morning stupor. Every so often though, I drive past a student of mine. Now, each time, driving past him evokes a whir with
As an English teacher I am surely granted the eternal power of an exaggeration fueled headline every once in a while. Ok – so perhaps highlighters aren’t the biggest problem in education, but if you know me well, you may have heard my complaint whereat these gaudy coloured pens symbolize
As part of our whole staff training at Huntington School we have been sharing ideas and collating ‘Top Ten Strategies’. This list is the fruits of our labour: 1. Differentiated questioning. Given the time we take doing it daily, effective questioning may well be the highest impact strategy we can
I was brought up by my family to believe that you got your just rewards for working hard. It is a belief that has stayed with me and nourished me throughout my life. Well, with some important qualifications. You see, we weren’t very good at mathematics in my family.
It is exam results week and teachers all over England will be picking through the remnants of their students’ results – their successes and failures. My thoughts come to one of the mainstay strategies that correlate with exam success. That dull and nagging pain: revision. We know that a world of
Alternatively titled: ‘How do we get the best teachers to Prestatyn and Great Yarmouth?’ “Come To Sunny Prestatyn Laughed the girl on the poster, Kneeling up on the sand In tautened white satin. Behind her, a hunk of coast, a Hotel with palms…” So starts ‘Sunny Prestatyn‘, by Phillip Larkin.
Wayne Rooney, aged 16, scoring an iconic goal against Arsenal. Genius derived from genes? Or does practice make perfect? Most young boys grow up in Liverpool playing football and little else. I fulfilled the stereotype with aplomb. I’d play football in shop doorways, braving passing buses, or, more safely,
[Insert inspirational quote about failure here] I fail therefore I succeed. Failure is the pathway to success. Learn to fail – learn to succeed. The internet is awash with aphorisms like these. A million posters about attitude and mindset capture the same common sense truth. Failure, although bitter to the taste,
Few things in education are as spectacularly emotive and ire-inducing as the choice of books we read for English Literature in schools. This last week we have seen Gove receive a full-frontal assault for the mere suggestion of removing books from the GCSE specification (did he or didn’t he
Are you looking to change the behaviour of your students, or tweak the habits of your fellow teachers – then go EAST… Make the desired behaviour Easy. Make the desired behaviour Attractive. Make the desired behaviour Social. Make the desired behaviour Timely. The ‘Behavioural Insights Team‘ is a government organisation (now
Etymology (noun) The study of the origin of words and the way in which their meanings have changed throughout history. Etymology is often often considered the preserve of the English teacher. I would argue that it is a goldmine of an opportunity (too often missed) for teachers of every subject
What if we are not the accurate judges that we think ourselves to be? What if our natural biases get the better of us, even when we don’t expect them to do so? Does it mean we are not really very good at assessing the work of our own