I wrote this blog back in 2009 when I was in my fourth year of teaching and without a classroom. I had spent the previous 18 months traipsing between multiple classrooms - including one transition that required 6 sets of … Read More
A few weeks ago (April 26th) I had a dream about how school should work post-lockdown. Not a Martin-Luther-visionary kind of way. An actual dream. In it I was travelling to pick up newly arrived international students to take … Read More
Miss Watson emailed me recently. Miss Watson! She was my form tutor in year 9 and 10, and the only woman who taught me anything about how to break a wild class. She had poker straight hair, and huge glasses, and … Read More
Last weekend I attended the Sunday Times Education Festival at Wellington. It was brilliant. Sunshine, nice grounds, hundreds of people chatting about edu-nerdy things. It's basically my nirvana. Busy enjoying myself I didn't take many notes or feel particularly moved to … Read More
Saturday was the scene of the first ever TouchPaper Problem Party, and it was amazing. It was, quite literally, a super fun nerdy education party! The story of its genesis is remarkably simple. A few months after I gave a talk … Read More
Back in September, the ResearchEd conference hosted a vast range of speakers suggesting how research might be more effectively used in education. My own contribution was a presentation of 7 problems which, if answered, would help teachers understand important things about … Read More
I am currently being forced to read shedloads of papers about “Total Quality Management” – both in engineering and in education. Much of it is soporific management speak. But every now and then something catches my eye. Here’s today's: Having charts showing … Read More
Bit late on this month's blogsync but better than never, right?... Topic (last) month was: Marking With Impact. Having taught several subjects across KS3 - 5, my marking techniques have varied. Here are just three which I think had impact even if they're … Read More
This is the first blogpost expanding on the TouchPaper Problems first discussed at #Researched2013. What is the shortest period of a time in which a person with dyslexia can be taught to spell the 1000 most common words in English? This question … Read More
With no #blogsync over the summer, I've not written anything 'classroom-y' for a while. So I thought I'd share this tip while awaiting the September blogync topic. One of the problems of my first year in teaching was getting students to … Read More