Alex Quigley profile image

Alex Quigley

York, UK
Improving Written Feedback Post feature image

Improving Written Feedback

This week I gave a seminar at TeachMeet Clevedon. I am going to post more fully on my topic of teachers getting better by undertaking ‘deliberate practice‘ sometime soon. One smaller aspect of my presentation was how teachers can improve written feedback, both to improve learning and to marginally reduce

Why Write A Blog? Post feature image

Why Write A Blog?

“A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.” Anthony Trollope I have just received my congratulations from WordPress on the first anniversary of my blog! Nearly eighty posts later, easily over one hundred thousand words, I feel immense pride at having

Explanations: Top 10 Teaching Tips Post feature image

Explanations: Top 10 Teaching Tips

“There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.” Michel de Montaigne quotes (French Philosopher and Writer. 1533-1592)

Overcoming the 'OK Plateau' Post feature image

Overcoming the 'OK Plateau'

Leap over you professional plateau. (This post is a copy of my article for the Guardian Teacher network) I’m a huge football fan and I always have been since my father took me to watch Everton with the promise of dour football and a lukewarm pie. Such inspiration led

Failing with Confidence Post feature image

Failing with Confidence

So often this year I have encountered students crippled with a fear of failure. At this time of year, with exams looming, that crisis of confidence can erupt – flattening a student with terrific force. In schools we can use the resilient language of the ‘growth mindset’, but for many students

Cracking the Academic Code Post feature image

Cracking the Academic Code

‘I speak therefore I am’ Ten years ago I moved from my home in Liverpool to become a teacher in York. I went to the Liverpool University so my accent, dialect, and my language more generally, was largely unchanged from my time at school. Of course, I had undertaken lots

Effective Revision Strategies Post feature image

Effective Revision Strategies

There is a lot of cognitive science research that proves what revision strategies work best for embedding information into the long term memory – which is our goal in relation to exam success. Some of it is common sense, but other aspects may surprise you or challenge your thinking. There are

Shared Writing: Modelling Mastery Post feature image

Shared Writing: Modelling Mastery

If the path of repeated deliberate practice makes something like perfect, then imitating good models of writing provides solid foundations for the pursuit of writing excellence. ‘Shared writing‘ is one specific strategy that models writing in a highly effective way and is one of my favourite and most effective teaching

Reading Fast and Slow Post feature image

Reading Fast and Slow

Reading too slowly? The movement towards a ‘slow education‘, encompassing deeper, richer learning experiences, is surely the antidote to our assessment driven, checkpoint laden curriculum. In my previous post I explained that we should slim down our content-filled curriculum to maximise the opportunities for reading. More reading is surely a

Make your 'Marking Policy' a 'Feedback Policy' Post feature image

Make your 'Marking Policy' a 'Feedback Policy'

Marking workload getting on top of you? Many schools, and departments, have been reflecting about their marking policies ever since OFSTED declared more than a healthy interest in scrutinising books. Progress over time has rightly been identified as more important than single lesson snap shots – of course, that evidence if