Statistics are criminally misused for personal gain. They are a powerful tool for strengthening one’s opinion or argument because they are often misunderstood by the audience. A statistic can be a headline or the central feature of a piece of prose designed to convey a message, and often provide the oomph required to influence a…
Due to the new and challenging GCSE expectations and how there is a culture of complacency within Heathfield students, we have been determined to light a fire inside our KS3 students with the intention that they won’t find a way to put it out, but instead it will burn brightly all the way to KS4.…
It took me two goes to learn to drive. And I don’t mean two goes at the test. I gave up first time around in my late teens without even having booked a theory test. Now I don’t want to put it (all) down to the instructor at the time. He told me what to…
Our students are going to have to remember a lot. Our current Year 9 Geography class will have to hold the details of the Lesotho Water Highland Project in their heads, ready to apply it to a question in two years time. My Year 10 class are currently very knowledgeable about the problems facing the…
I’m a massive social media geek. Whilst I’m actually pretty bored of Facebook and – as a teacher – pretty terrified of its shifting privacy settings which have sometimes escaped my attention (CHECK REGULARLY, PEOPLE!) I can’t quite leave it in case I miss out on a birth announcement/charity campaign of interest/member of my…
Learning involves a change in long term memory. If pupils haven’t remembered something there may have been limited benefit in doing it in the first place. Over the years I have seen a lot of lessons that have been “memorable” where the pupils have remembered the task but not the learning. They remembered making volcanoes out of Plasticine but not how an eruption occurs, they remember the primary school project on the River Nile but not where rivers start and how they flow.
Lets not plan memorable lessons but memorable learning instead.
In a previous school (and a previous life) I can fully admit I ‘worked too hard’. I lived to work rather than worked to live … but was I happy? Not really. I have always loved my job, and for some reason that annoys some people, but I don’t really care. I feel lucky to…
Literacy Across the Curriculum. Four words guaranteed to bring cheery staffroom conversation to a standstill and send teachers of every flavour into paroxysms of paranoia about their punctuation and spelling. It doesn’t sound like fun. It sounds like someone wants to crack down on wrongly-used apostrophes. It sounds like English across the curriculum. Worse still,…
Rolled up snow wash jeans, Adidas pumps, white socks, floppy fringes and terraces inspired shell suit jackets: our sixth formers seem to be resurrecting 80s casual in 2017. It feels easy to dismiss such fashionista recycling not as post- modern bricolage, but hackneyed and unoriginal. Could the same be said of that stereotypical “I’ve seen…
If someone had asked me or told me that I had to write a blog post for all to see, I may have broken out in a cold sweat. I would have smiled graciously and said thank you and of course but, inside, I would have immediately begun to think of reasons why I couldn’t. I’m…
Technology in education is here to stay. There is no question about it. We live in a world that is reliant on technology in one way or another; you only need to ask recent passengers on British Airways about the reliance we have on technology. But the question to ask ourselves is how are we…
Quickly skim read the following: “I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgement of God on these barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands with so much innocent blood; and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future, which are satisfactory grounds for such action which cannot otherwise but…
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