Immerse yourself in the art and science of teaching and learning with a comprehensive range of blogs. Explore dynamic topics such as effective feedback strategies, impactful explanations, the art of questioning, and more. Gain valuable insights into pedagogical techniques informed by research evidence, along with an array of practical tips. These blogs are useful for teachers, leaders and everyone interested in education.
Since I have been writing this blog in 2012, no subject has interested me more than the nuanced, complicated staple of teaching: questioning. As a teacher of nearly 15 years, I have attempted annual to crack the code for asking great questions. I am working on it. Happily, I have
Each year we are all faced with the nerve-shredding, tolerance-stretching spell that is revision. It never seems to get any easier. Each group of students proves a unique, gnarly challenge as we go about training, convincing, supporting, and more. It has proven a consistent topic for me to write about,
It is that time of year again. Nerves fray, students and teachers (probably parents too) as we arm our students with the obligatory revision strategies, resources, wall plans, flashcards, apps, highlighters, revision guides, and whatever else we can get our hands on, in the flimsy hope that some of it
I don’t think there are many English teachers who haven’t asked the following question in the last year: ‘how do I help my class better remember quotations?’ It is an age-old question, but it is a very good one. It is not about producing unthinking parrots that squawk
And the evidence says… Feedback is the answer! It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a teaching wanting to help their students learn effectively must give lots of feedback. Marking, lots of it, should get to the root of many of our problems. We just need more of it, right?
We can all imagine our own personal hell of terminal exams, stacked on top of one another, with acres of knowledge to remember. It is the stuff of sleepless nights, for teachers and for our students. And yet, if we teach with memory in mind all the time, we can
Some aspects of education are devilishly complex: take many school tracking systems, our army of acronyms, or behaviour management on a windy Wednesday. And yet, some thing are very simple. As I sat and read this short article on the TES – entitled ‘Cut Teaching Hours to Ease the Recruitment Crisis,
(Image sourced from Flickr and courtesy of City of York Council) “It [Confidence] is the single most important attribute any child can have. I truly wish there were classes to focus on it…With confidence comes personality. With personality comes a form of charm, wit and wisdom. These can camouflage
(Image sourced via Pixabay.com) In writing a book for teachers with purpose of developing their self-confidence, I was always very wary of being misinterpreted as representing confidence as some gift that is granted to us with a moment of inspirational self-talk. Confidence isn’t some elixir that grants us
(Image sourced via Pixabay) I hate speaking on the phone. I loathe it with a singular passion and look to avoid it when I can. Why do I experience such a visceral response to something so, well, ordinary? The answer: a phone call deprives me of the crucial stuff of
I have the following image to start a couple of assemblies at school. My question for students: what emotions is the woman at the centre of this image experiencing? Negative answers abound: she is invariably lonely and sad. Such assumptions about standing aside from the crowd pervades our culture. We
This blog series was inspired by the simple and complex truth, offered by Professor Rob Coe, that we need to get students thinking hard to learn best. The first post in my series, entitled ‘Thinking Hard…And Why We Avoid It‘, explores why our students’ lazy brains let them down