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 […]
It may seem sometimes that there is nothing we can do to help address the epidemic of mental health issues which exist in our schools. We ourselves are under so much pressure from above to deliver progress and grades that it is difficult to raise our eyes over the educational parapet and see the bigger […]
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 […]
I have concluded that there is almost no activity which doesn’t teach me something about teaching. Freed from some of the rigorous constraints on my time by leaving a school environment, I’ve taken to a daily gym session to force me out of bed, refresh my mind and body and ready me for the challenges […]
To make a seating plan or not to make a seating plan? I’ve been in schools where it was the teacher’s choice and where it was mandatory for every class. I now firmly believe that a seating plan is a vital tool in the teacher’s armoury. The paramount reason for this is the basic, essential […]
If you have to share a classroom with 30 young people, it’s an awful lot easier to get things done if there is an understanding between you, a tacit contract that you will treat one another with respect, that the students will let the teacher teach, and the teacher will help the students learn. […]
So you’ve kept Joe, or Leah, or Sam back after a lesson where they pushed you to the point where you had to issue a detention. You didn’t engage in discussion about it in the lesson, but now is the time. This is the point at which you have an opportunity a) to confirm that […]
So you’ve kept Joe, or Leah, or Sam back after a lesson where they pushed you to the point where you had to issue a detention. You didn’t engage in discussion about it in the lesson, but now is the time. This is the point at which you have an opportunity a) to confirm that […]
On EduTwitter I read a lot of discussion about how teachers shouldn’t need to be liked by students; they should simply be able to expect obedience and compliance from their classes, and schools should have ways of dealing with the students if they don’t comply as expected. And I agree. There must be an expectation […]
It’s early 2018 as I write, and a very tough time to be a child. It’s not that easy for the rest of us, but it doesn’t take much of a stretch of imagination to see that it must be unbelievably scary and confusing through the lens of a child. We have lived through a […]
