A couple of years ago, I was introduced to the concept of flipped learning during a twilight CPL session. The session explored how ‘flipping the learning’ with KS5 was having a positive impact in the classroom and on exam results. In the flipped learning model I was shown, students learned about new concepts through short…
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…
I love a good teaching and learning book, as anyone who has popped into my classroom or tried to find something on my desk can attest. I also really enjoy attending research conferences (I’m speaking at ResearchEd Durrington this weekend and ResearchEd national conference in London in the Autumn) and find leafing through a research…
What do we do as teachers when we are trying to help a difficult class make the progress we want them to? Teaching is an unremittingly harsh profession at times; teachers will spend hours worrying over the class or classes that aren’t doing as well as they should. As a result, it is too easy…
One of the (many) reasons I love teaching English – in particular, literature – is because it’s all about (to use the vernacular) ‘the feels’. To me, literature IS humanity; it’s sex and drugs and rock and roll – well, at A level it is. Seriously, engaging with literature requires oodles of empathy. To paraphrase…
In late January 2014, I decided I was going to take up exam marking. When I mentioned this to colleagues, they would groan in horror, check if I was mad and wander off, shaking their heads. I think all of us would like to say something really noble like we’re doing it for the students…
When our year 11 class go into that exam hall for their final exams, I always experience a mixture of emotions. Fear. Have I done enough? Will they cope? Is it going to be a ‘nice’ paper? Relief. It’s over. I can do no more. This is it…breathe Excitement. Which juicy questions are they going…
On a blustery autumnal morning, I reached my desk in my classroom, switched on my computer, opened my first PowerPoint presentation for the first lesson of the day and pressed the ‘on’ button on my projector. Nothing happened. That trusty piece of equipment that on a daily (hourly!) basis projected my entire lesson for students,…
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.
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