When I left Heathfield for maternity leave, I really struggled. I felt lost not being in the classroom, I missed the staff and students massively and it definitely took me a little while to adapt to “motherhood”. By the time 10 months had passed, I was fully enjoying all the coffee and cake with my…
I am writing this post in bits and pieces over the course of a couple of days during any time I can snatch in between: juggling recording lessons on Loom, narrating on PowerPoints, meeting pupils live on Teams, checking pupil work on Firefly, giving them feedback, logging missed work, responding to questions and answering emails.…
An exploration of Jamie Thom’s ‘A Quiet Education’ and what it looks like in practice.
In Mark’s recent blog, Lessons in Revision for Heathfield Teach Share, he explained how he had been using the Heathfield Revision Clock to model revision for students and to get them into the habit of revising effectively. Mark ends his blog with a summary of his key principles that he now follows in regards to…
One teacher explains how Lockdown actually provided an opportunity for developing subject specific CPL.
In our most recent blog post, Lesson in Revision Part 2 by Emma Smith, we explored the idea of effective revision and looked at how we are using the Heathfield Revision Clock to model effective revision to our students. In our most recent collaboration cycles, we have all shared in planning and delivering a revision…
I have found that my perspective on revision lessons has changed considerably over the years that I have been teaching. In those long-gone halcyon days of my youth, revision lessons largely involved me running back over the key material from part of the course before saying to the class that they needed to use the…
I always thought that my explanation in the classroom was pretty good. After 17 years of practice it felt like I knew what I was doing, and I understood how to make what I said stick. However, a few months of remote teaching and a few weeks of socially distanced teaching has shown me that…
During lockdown, between the setting of remote lessons, dialogue with pupils and the endless search for shops still stocking pasta, my wife and I were asked to write a book about Generative Learning. This is part of a series of books started, and edited, by Tom Sherrington with his look at Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction…
At 7am this morning the Evidence Based Education’s review of the evidence for their Great Teaching Toolkit landed in the inbox of teachers up and down the country. If you hadn’t signed up to get a copy you can download it here. What this team have done is to review the evidence into what makes…
Reflecting on the Education Endowment Foundation’s latest evidence assessment.
With the Coronavirus closing schools around the world we are now seeing more and more about remote learning and the changes this will lead to. Some people are throwing out everything they know about effective instruction and deciding that remote learning changes everything. However, I think it is worth taking a breath and remembering that…
I like to preface my teaching of Wuthering Heights with a compulsory screening of Kate Bush crying ‘Heathcliff! It’s me, it’s Cathy I’ve come home now!’ and prancing on the moors in a billowy dress while she moans musically about the sad effects of being outdoors in not much more than a nightie. The reaction…
In December 2018 there was an excellent article in the journal Teaching History in which a history teacher had investigated how the writing of historic fiction helped students to construct a better, deeper understanding of the medieval past. In the article, the teacher had carefully structured a series of lessons to help students write their…
I first came across Oliver Caviglioli on the pedagogical goldmine that is Twitter. To be honest, I was ‘drawn’ to the graphics he posted on his feed (see what I did there?) and the fact that he thinks the free Waitrose weekend newspaper is a model of sensible and user-friendly design. In his book, Dual…
A blog about history teaching and other matters
Collating some of the excellent practice shared on Twitter
Finding & sharing teaching 'bright spots'
Teaching what works
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