Category Archives: Pedagogy

Is it blasphemous to doubt the efficacy of AfL? We teach in a world where formative assessment has become dogma, and where feedback is king. (I’m not about to start upsetting the feedback applecart although there are occasions when pupils can … Continue reading →

What does practice make? Well, it turns out that my mum was wrong. Doug Lemov points out in Practice Perfect that practice doesn’t make perfect, practice makes permanent. What we practise we get good at. And sometimes we get very good at … Continue reading →

So, you’ve explained the new concepts and ideas students will need to know, deconstructed examples so that they know how to use these concepts in practice and you’ve modelled the process of how an expert would go about creating an … Continue reading →

One of the great joys of Twitter is being introduced to “ big ” names in education, without the social embarrassment of clear… Continued in sines & wonders: The Times They Are A Changin’

Over the past few years I’ve thought a lot about how and what we should teach. I’ve undertaken a long and painful journey from evangelically promoting the teaching of transferable ’21st century skills’ like creativity and problem solving to deciding … Continue reading →

“Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process.” There are some definite pit falls to avoid in explaining stuff to kids. The biggest criticism of teachers talking is that … Continue reading →

Last year I wrote a post called The Anatomy of an Outstanding Lesson, by far my most viewed post with almost 10,000 page views. Clearly teachers are hungry for this kind of thing. But it’s become increasingly obvious to me over … Continue reading →

Having read Daisy Chistodoulou’s fabulously well-research, cogently argued and clearly expressed eBook Seven Myths About Education, some of my own thoughts on teacher talk and independent learning have started to coalesce… Continued in Independence vs independent learning..