Reflections: The impact of school closures on disadvantaged students and the attainment gap
Reflecting on the Education Endowment Foundation’s latest evidence assessment.
Why are we so great?
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…
Teaching and Learning – Remotely
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…
Doubling down on Wuthering Heights
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…
Working with English to deepen knowledge in History
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…
Research Spotlight – 2019 Term Two
Research Focus – Curriculum and Knowledge The new OFSTED framework, with its new method of “deep-diving” a department to question its teachers, has led to a new found interest in curriculum intent. After years of focusing on how we teach, a new focus on what we teach and why is probably not unwelcome but it…
Structuring Lessons
I have recently been reading ‘Love to Teach’ by Kate Jones. It is always refreshing to spend time reading and reminding yourself of key successes within lessons. I often try to think of innovative ways to ensure that I can introduce a new topic effectively. Whilst thinking and researching about how to deliver new topics…
Cognitive Load Theory in Practice
This academic year we are paying particular attention to understanding the principles of Cognitive Load Theory (that emerged from the work of John Sweller) and are carefully considering how this can be applied in the classroom to maximise students’ learning. Drawing on the NSW’s Cognitive Load in Practice in particular, members of the Ped Team…
Research Spotlight – 2019 Term One
Research focus – Metacognition ‘These learners are proactive in their efforts to learn because they are aware of their strengths and limitations and because they are guided by personally set goals and task-related strategies, such as using an arithmetic addition strategy to check the accuracy of solutions to subtraction problems. These learners monitor their behavior…
Research Spotlight – April
Research Focus – Curriculum and Progress Curriculum has been a topic of increasing interest in the education community over the past few years; reflecting a concern that a focus on generic pedagogy (how we learn) was drawing focus from the subject itself (what we learn). One interesting idea that has been bouncing around concerns the…
Research Spotlight – March
Research Focus – Revision With exams looming the minds of teachers, leader, parents and pupils turn to revision. This is unfortunate as waiting for the approach of the exams to start revision is highly ineffective – we need pupils to be revising and reviewing what they have learnt throughout the year (and over the years)…
