PEE, PEA, PETAL and PETER I am not sure when it first arrived. It may have been related to assessments and mentioned at an exam board meeting, or perhaps it popped up on a shared power point somewhere. It may have simply crept into the school under the cover of darkness, hidden in a textbook…
My new book, Teach Like Nobody’s Watching, is due to be sent off to the printers any day now and should soon be winging its way out to teachers around the country. Sometimes people ask why some of us bother to write books about education; you make very little money from it and there isn’t…
In her latest post, Zoe Enser (@GreeboRunner) reflects on the journey that gets her pupils feeling relaxed and ready for their exams. ‘Should we be worried we aren’t more worried about our exam?’ pondered my year 11 last week. They genuinely were bemused as to why their anxiety wasn’t through the roof. They didn’t feel…
This is a guest post from Zoe Enser (@GreeboRunner), Director of Improvement and CPD at Seahaven Academy. Building Schemas in the English Curriculum ‘But we did this last week!! How can you not remember?’ We hear ourselves say this with annoying regularity and the urge to sit and quietly sob at your desk almost can be almost overwhelming at the end of a long day, week or term. This repeated cycle…
The invisible nature of teaching well Many of the elements of great teaching are invisible to the naked eye. It comprises of the tiny adjustments we make in the classroom, there and then, in response to events as they unfold. These decisions are based on a combination of professional knowledge and experience. As our experience…
I promise you this will get to the bit about teaching and learning but first I need to talk to you about running. Stay with me. Being mercurial by nature, I am somewhat prone to obsession. My latest one is CrossFit. Not doing it (not yet anyway) but watching the many, strangely compelling documentaries about…
In December I wrote a short piece for TES suggesting that schools should stop laying on after school and holiday revision sessions for pupils (Schools must say “no” to out of hours revision, for the good of the profession). My argument was based on applying the economic model of common resources, put forward by Hardin,…
At the beginning of this year I wrote a post called What makes the difference? This was after we achieved some excellent GCSE and A level results both as a department and as a school, our option numbers were soaring at the same time (suggesting pupils were also enjoying their lessons) and there seemed to be…
I have recently been rereading Fergal Roche’s book Mining for Gold . This book is a reflection on the teachers he has encountered through his life, as a student, teacher, consultant and parent, and his reflections on what has made them effective. It is a collection of little vignettes on teachers from across the decades and an…
Research from Meyer & Land (2006] into undergraduate education helps us to understand why some pupils seem to get stuck with a particular topic when others have no difficulty. They identified what they termed “Threshold concepts”, ideas that are central to the understanding of a topic and without which pupils can’t progress. They showed that…
Teaching it Real 