At our school, we build our idea of excellent teaching and learning around four pillars. The first two, challenge and feedback, are fairly uncontroversial but the other two, engagement and independence, sometimes raises eyebrows. I think this is because the two terms get so misused in education out of a desire to make everything something…
Towards the end of last term, as we started to review our Expect Excellence action plan, my thoughts shifted towards our next goal. I have become increasingly concerned that over the years our focus has been on how we teach and that we have taken our eye off what we teach – and why we…
What does excellence look like in your subject? That is the question that my department will be putting at the heart of all we do over the next year. For the last two years we have focused on increasing aspiration and expecting excellence. I wanted to ensure that we had a culture where everyone wanted…
Two years ago I decided that my department should have one particular focus for improvement. I work at a wonderful school, where results are very good and our kids generally want to do well. I was concerned though that there was a risk of complacency and the data seemed to bear this out. Results were…
My Year 7 class had something of a revelation this week. We have just started looking at coasts and coastal processes and spent the lesson learning about different types of erosion. Knowing that coasts, like rivers, are responsible for three processes (erosion, transportation and deposition) and that these shape the landscape are fundemental to the…
Do you ever find yourself watching the news or reading a paper and saying to yourself, ‘I don’t understand how this could happen’? If so, I’d suggest you may not have been paying attention in your Geography lessons. The study of Geography is as old as the hills. Or at least as old as people…
There are a huge number of wonderful blogs out there, packed full of practical advice and intriguing debates. The only issue is that they can be very ephemeral. Something wonderful is written but can be quickly forgotten. To try and combat this I thought I would try to pin down some of the blog posts…
