Developing teaching during a pandemic: a brief overview of what we’ve been doing

This blog will give you a whistle stop tour of how we have been trying to continue to develop teaching during this challenging yet fruitful time to be in education in the UK. What has been encouraging during Lockdown 2.0 (or is it 3.0?) is that, at our school, we have not changed how we…

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The Rhythm of the Teaching Life

Teachers work in a rhythmic way. Our work moves in patterns and processes that are arranged systematically into half-terms, terms and academic years. In one sense this might seem mundane, yet, like a piece of music, without an episodic pattern, our work would make no sense…or their wouldn’t be any of us left.  There’s something…

Reflections on two years of writing…..and my top five posts.

Looking Back I am still quite blown away by the amount of people who read this blog. I still continue to write to make sense of my experiences in the classroom and as a fledgling leader, it has been wonderful to hear that much of what I’ve written about still resonates with others in the…

Not putting pressure on our Year 6 pupils.

SATs. It’s a dreaded acronym that generates anxiety for senior leaders, teachers, children and parents alike. I could discuss how I dislike them (which is true but I do think they’re probably essential) and ramble on about how it’s too much too soon (which isn’t true; I think they’re pitched right for most) but I…

The best education books I read in 2018

So, my Reading Challenge 2018 has come to an end. I read some great stuff. Here is my top 7 education books...in no particular order. What does this look like in the classroom? by Carl Hendrick and Robin MacPherson This book surveyed several areas of research that might be applicable to the classroom in an accessible…

Ofsted and the Curriculum: what you need to know

There has been a paradigm shift in curriculum thinking at Ofsted. It began on the 23rd of June 2017 at the Wellington Festival of Education. In a speech entitled ‘enriching the fabric of education’, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector Amanda Speilman delivered these words: “One of the areas I think we sometimes lose sight of is…

6 retrieval practice strategies to use everyday

My last post showed the research base for the benefits of the testing effect, more appropriately referred to as ‘retrieval practice’. There is a vast wealth of resources now available to teachers that can aid their use of retrieval practice in the classroom. Building on a recent paper by Firth et al (2017), here are…

Book Review: Responsive Teaching by Harry Fletcher – Wood

This review forms part of my Reading Challenge 2018. For more reviews of books, see here. This book begins with confusions and problems with AfL that have bothered teachers for a very long time. At only 160 or so pages long, it is deceivingly weighty in its claims about how these issues could be solved.…

Why do our pupils forget what we teach them?

In the classroom, as a teacher, forgetting can be particularly confusing. It’s a conundrum when pupils can vividly remember the visitor who came in Year 3 with weird Viking swords, yet three years on, they can’t remember the answer to 7 x 8 to complete a column multiplication calculation.

Dealing with Defiant Behaviour: ‘The Language of Choice’

In this post, I suggest one strategy for dealing with defiant behaviour effectively. To explain and illustrate this, I want to go back to Mr Blake’s classroom, the first time we visited is here. This time we’re going to meet someone new from his class*. Roxy Mr Blake had just started his Year 4 Maths…