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.
If you are a school teacher and you haven’t heard of Carol Dweck’s ubiquitous growth and fixed mindset concept then… quite frankly, where the hell have you been for the past few years? No doubt lots of good has emerged from this common-sense psychological framework, with a few
What does this lovely old lady reveal positive messages about student success? Why is her story potentially so powerful? Nola Ochs is a special lady. So special she appears in the Guinness Book of Records. Back in 2007, Nola Ochs became the world’s oldest college graduate when she graduated
(Image based on the Education Endowment Foundation Toolkit findings) All the evidence tells us that great feedback works. Simple. Let’s do more of that and all of our students will gain…easy! And yet, what do we mean by feedback? What does great feedback look like in the classroom?
For teachers, April can prove the cruellest month – and May is only bloody worse. Exam time is upon us and it is the final days of deadlines, exam revision, and of schooling, for many of our students. In those final lessons the tension can prove palpable. The confident and quiet
Teaching Assistants, like their teacher colleagues, get flak and plaudits in equal measure. Some of the headlines conflate teaching assistants with unqualified support staff to create ugly headlines: “Unqualified Teaching Assistants ‘Harming Pupils’ Education’ Teachers Say“. When you spy some of the evidence, like the headlines from the Education Endowment
Mr Laing was my year 8 Maths teacher. He was a rare breed indeed. He helped me, and my fellow pimple-clad teens, find mathematics interesting. Intermittently, he would betray a deep excitement about a mathematics problem or reveal that he had woken up in the middle of the night with
I remember my time at school particularly fondly. I was happy to get involved; I would volunteer to read and attempt to make wise-cracks and more in the relative safety of my group of friends. Like any teenager slouching grimly into adulthood, I was uncertain of myself, frightened of being
All the evidence indicates that teachers develop intensively in their first couple of years of teaching and that they then plateau in their development, regardless of the intricate plans for continuous professional development (CPD) that schools construct. This was my personal experience. You conquer the struggles of simply managing your
Every once in a while the bleak personal stories of our students are opened up to us like a drawer of knives. We get a brief glimpse into personal prisons that children shouldn’t ever experience. Names will rise to the surface of the mind of every teacher when I
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