Knowledge, Skills and Whole Class Feedback

There can’t be many ideas or initiatives that have saved more teachers more time than whole class feedback. Whether using a specific pro-forma, or taking notes on the closest available piece of scrap paper, focussing on actually reading a set of exercise books and identifying misconceptions rather than writing lots of formative comments relieves much of…

What do we want from the KS3 Curriculum?

Around two and a half years ago, Head teacher Tom Sherrington posted this tweet. It left a lasting impression on me, and I suspect many others: If there was no OfSTED, no league tables, no SLT… just you and your class..what would you choose to do to make it GREAT? Do that anyway… At a time where…

How do you teach a novel you’ve never taught before?

When the new specifications changed, and texts like To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men were removed from the GCSE syllabus, I was pretty upset. Not because I felt that these texts were somehow ‘better’ than the ones set to replace them, not because I have a particular love for American literature, not because I thought…

Grammar Lessons for Descriptive Writing

As much as I love marking, it can be one the quickest and most efficient ways to make me feel like a failure.  This sensation struck me in spades last term after I marked my classes’ efforts at descriptive writing coursework – part of the Cambridge iGCSE course. As I’m only able to give general comments about students’…

William Blake and the Connections between Knowledge.

This summer we decided to stay in the UK for our holiday. I’ve always felt a little ashamed of how little of my homeland I’ve actually seen. We stayed in the beautiful lake district, drove to Glasgow for the Commonwealth Games and spent a couple of days soaking up history around Hadrian’s Wall. In Glasgow we…

Speaking & Listening and the Subordination of Knowledge

I use to be jealous of Maths teachers. Not for the range of stationery they have at their disposable, nor their titanic powers of organisation. No – I was jealous of their curriculum. I was envious of how there seemed to be a discrete number of topics which could easily be organised and worked through logically, whereas…

Persuasive Writing and the Elements of Eloquence

If someone asked you what the purpose of blogging was, what would you say? If you’re an education blogger, what label would you pick as the purpose of your craft? Is it writing to argue? Writing to persuade? Or, does it also contain information? Perhaps even, a little advice? Or, am I asking you to place an arbitrary…