Why being positive can sometimes be counter-intuitive for teachers.

The advice to ‘catch them getting it right’ is hardly a novel idea. But I would argue that, like the smiley face and the sad face, it is not often put into practice with enough consistency and therefore with enough impact. In fact, I think in practice it often deteriorates into an exercise of stabbing […]

How to set homework in a Strictly Positive way

It is a requirement in UK, in common with many other nations of the world, that teachers “set homework and plan other out-of-class activities to consolidate and extend the knowledge and understanding pupils have acquired”. This is a tricky concept for me, as it accepts as fact that homework will, by its very nature, ‘consolidate […]