Goal Setting and Building Cathedrals
How do we encourage reluctant children to successfully stick with a tricky task? How do we advise truculent teens to persist through a long and winding learning curve fraught with failure? These are the perennial questions we ask that are about how best to motivate learners to undertake the struggle
How to do disciplinary literacy?
How pupils read, write, talk, and the vocabulary they use in every classroom is specialist and unique. There are general words and literacy strategies to deploy, but as pupils move up through school, the language they use gets more specialist and subject specific. As a result, the language of the
Adaptive teaching or reasonable adjustments?
“Is adaptive teaching the same thing as ‘reasonable adjustments’?” I get asked this question often when working with teachers and leaders on developing adaptive teaching. It is no surprise, given they can often appear similar when applied to classroom practices that support pupils with learning needs. It is helpful for
Fixing Learning with Formative Assessment
Even with the best-laid curriculum plans, classroom learning can easily go awry. A painstakingly crafted lesson plan is always at the mercy of pupils’ misunderstanding. In his brilliant book, entitled ‘The Hidden Lives of Learners’, Graham Nuthall observed and recorded around 10,000 lessons and concluded that: “One of the
The Problem with Past Papers
My weekend typically involves helping coach my boy’s football team in muddy fields in the far corners of North Yorkshire. It is one of those parental experiences that mingles pleasure with pain. From narrow wins to thumping losses. Coaching is a lot like teaching. From wrangling a bunch of
Focusing on Learning Failures and Problems
If you want to guarantee clicks on an article or to sell a new product, a focus on failure is the last thing you’d do. People want success. Ideally, they want success quick, cheap, and easy. And yet, when it comes to securing success in classrooms, I think it
Why Learning Fails - Free Resources
My new book - 'Why Learning Fails (And What To Do About It)' - has been published this week. It explores eight common problems that beset the classroom and beyond. To make sure this book is practical for every teacher, I have also developed a range of free
