The person who observes a clock, sees in it not only the pendulum swinging to and fro, and the dial-plate, and the hands moving, for a child can see all this; but he sees also the parts of the clock, and in what connection the suspended weight stands to the wheel-work, and the pendulum to…
If I can’t impress you with my quality I will overwhelm you with my quantity. Emile Zola I have been reflecting a lot of writing recently. I am possibly one of the most prolific education writers out there. There are certainly much better education writers than me, Biesta’s work is pure poetry for example, but…
One of the things I love abut twitter (other than the obvious access to D&D chat and the fact that Mark Hamill liked my tweet!!) is how it gets me thinking. I have always been a reflective practitioner. Indeed, I have, and continue to be, a reflective person, sometimes spending far too much time reflecting…
Our brand new book, Generative Learning in Action by Zoe and Mark Enser is available for pre-order now! In this post we explain the thinking behind it. It is a question which seemed to dominate the educational world for quite some time: where were you when you first heard about the Rosenshine’s Principles? On first…
Latest post from Zoe Enser (@GreeboRunner) on the mysteries of memory. This week has been a tough week. It would appear that my mum, who is 89 and has dementia, has been taking a turn for the worse. Yesterday it was clear she didn’t remember my dad, having married him in 1952, and the idea…
Over the last couple of days Lord Andrew Adonis, Labour peer in the House of Lords and former Schools Minister under Tony Blair, has been raising eyebrows with a series of tweets on how he believes schools should be setting work during the lockdown. Yesterday he announced he was talking to former head of Ofsted,…
In her latest post, Zoe Enser (@GreeboRunner) considers the dangers of turning educational research into a tick-sheet of non-negotiables. I am a bit fan of Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction. His work, especially the 2012 pdf which is flying around everywhere, provides a clear and precise toolkit for effective teaching. It also provides a shared language,…
In her second guest post, Director of Improvement and CPD, Zoe Enser, discusses how CPD can be used to let teachers take the power back. ‘When the tempest rages, when the thunders roar, and the lightnings blaze around us it is then that the truly brave man stands firm at his post. Martin Luther Working in a school which had faced a number of challenges made us vulnerable in a number of ways. Often we were buffeted by the…
I really enjoyed this recent post by the great Tom Sherrington on Lessons That Misfire. In this post Tom carefully explains the conditions that make a great lesson before giving examples of the terrible activities he has seen that fail to deliver them. Most of these activities are ones I was encouraged to use when…
In our department CPD session this afternoon we looked at teacher explanation. We were interested in how we could make sure that our explanation was memorable and how we could support pupil’s working memory. Below are the slides I put together to trigger some discussions and share some key ideas. We started by sharing and…
