‘Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift’. Mary Oliver, poet. They say Autumn is…
What is your one-sentence definition of ‘Teaching’? Don’t slide past the question! Answer it in your head, at least. Preferably, write down your one-sentence answer, because to write it down…
The why The 2023 Department for Education survey found that 40,000 teachers – almost 9% of the teaching workforce – left state schools in the 2021-22 school year, before the…
I remember having a conversation something like this with my son, James, when he was ten or eleven years old: Me: Son, you really need to be eating your…
Trying to track down the source of the phrase ‘Effortlessly Superior’, I found a reference to this book in the Balliol College Archives and Manuscripts: Balliol College: a History,…
Marking will tear us apart (from The Literacy Shed Blog, paraphrasing a Joy Division song line…) ‘What went well, even better if’ and it’s sibling, ‘Two stars and a wish’…
The idea that teachers should adapt their teaching has been around for a long time. It was at the heart of Black and Wiliam's 2005 seminal paper that called for…
The growth of the internet has brought about an explosive increase in the availability of information, and a huge upsurge too in the use of media, especially social media -…
‘Any fool can criticise, condemn and complain - and most fools do’. Dale Carnegie The Cambridge Online Dictionary defines whinging as: ‘Continuous complaining, especially about something that does not seem…
Schools always define their behaviour expectations positively, and that’s right. But when a student is doing the wrong thing, they also need to be told explicitly by the teacher what…