Until recently, I thought I was a pretty traditional teacher. But nevertheless, I carried with me some watered down assumptions of child-centred teaching that had wheedled their way into my practice. It took a visit to Michaela Community School for me to appreciate how much I still had to shed.
Since that date, I have been become a devout worshipper at Jo Facer’s shrine of uncomplicated teaching. At ResearchEd 2016, Jo delivered her talk ‘We Have Overcomplicated Teaching’. Listening to Jo’s talk, I realised how much of my teaching was geared towards fallacious notions of pupil engagement. And I began to realise how little was geared towards teaching for memory.
I am not talking about group work, carousel activities, or discovery learning – things had not gotten that bad. But I am talking about multiple activities per lesson, intricate PowerPoint presentations*, lots of resources (particularly historical sources to…
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The Echo Chamber 