This month's #blogsync asked education bloggers to describe "an example of a great classroom explanation". The theme is inspired by an Alex Quigley blog on "Top Tips for Explanation", itself inspired by Joe Kirby's "What Makes Great Teaching?" It's an … Read More
With schools taking a vacation from the National Curriculum and a renewed focus on traditional 'academic' subjects, many schools have already laughed subjects like Sex Education off their teaching roster. "Teaching about condoms?" they say, "Ha! How quaint. These days … Read More
Teachers don't need their status raised in the eyes of the public. Telling people that you're a teacher, especially one who works in a secondary school, generally garners immediate respect. People will tell you that you're brave, and how they … Read More
If you haven't been reading @redorgreenpen's penetrating "7 kids in 7 days" blog, then you've missed out. By describing in searching detail the behaviours of seven students, anonymous blogger redorgreenpen gives the most authentic descriptions of challenging students' lives I have read … Read More
I recently wrote a piece called "Why I Learn" to inspire pupils at Greenwich Free School. You can find out what they thought of the piece here. Partly the piece was inspired by a commencement speech given by David Foster Wallace. … Read More
The topic of this month's #blogsync is "Progress in my classroom? How is it made and how I know it?" This post doesn't really tackle the philosophy of progress but I am going to give my best tip for ensuring you … Read More
In a recent email chain with the ever-thoughtful Harry Fletcher-Wood he asked me to write something short, building on a comment I'd made on Twitter, about why I believed in education. First I pointed him to David Foster Wallace's speech about education, … Read More
Tonight on Twitter, Tessa Matthews, of the incisive blog Tabula Rasa Education wrote: https://twitter.com/TessaLMatthews/status/324630874278727680 Now, given that learning styles have been 'debunked' I sympathise with the viewpoint. There's simply no evidence that students only learn while moving, singing, running, jumping, etc. HOWEVER! I, unlike most teachers, was not … Read More
“Nobody said it was easy, but no-one ever said it would be this hard” - Coldplay On my fourth day as a teacher I was assaulted by a pupil who came back after school to attack me. A few months later … Read More
I got zero on a maths test this week. Zero. On a maths test. I'm good at maths, and I've never got zero on anything in my life. Afterwards I was shell-shocked for about fifteen minutes. The tests are given at the … Read More