Earlier this year, Paul Warwick from Oracy Cambridge and Beccy Earnshaw from Voice21 gave a ‘double-header’ presentation for The Brilliant Club at the UCL Institute of Education in London. Especially secondary schools and colleges desiring students to engage more with education and life alike, this is a must read. I have taken the liberty here of retrofitting… Continue Reading →
Mrs Naomi Hennah (@MrsHennah) of Northampton School for Boys has created a clear and concise “visual summary of the complexity of chemical discourse” to boost oracy skills and language acquisition in chemistry. (Link at the end of the page). Teachers from other subjects should not be put off, however. This post should hopefully make Mrs Hennah’s considerations relevant not only to… Continue Reading →
This is the second one-minute read on the outcomes of Monday’s workshop Empowering KS2-5 Learners through Participatory Budgeting. How do we up-skill learners to generate, present and vote for proposals on the school budget in harmony with the 2019 inspection framework? Certainly not in a vacuum. As any English teacher will tell you, there is… Continue Reading →
This series of very brief articles recaps salient points from the workshop for the benefit of delegates and those unfortunates who missed it. [3 minutes to read] The five planned articles in this series correspond to the headlines of the workshop and are planned as roughly three-minute reads each: What is Cooperative Learning What is retrieval practice? What is spaced retrieval practice?… Continue Reading →
At first glance, Participatory Budgeting would seem to fit snugly into the left-wing, child-empowering, progressive fold. At second glance, you might say that it sits equally well with the competition-driven Dragon’s Den of standard neo-liberal Enterprise Education. But, like Katharine Birbalsingh, Participatory Budgeting defies categorisation and, as such, could open a liminal space for a… Continue Reading →
Pertinent to the profound themes of last month’s VNET Conference, you are now invited to join exceptional colleagues to explore how manageable civic engagement can be aligned with the new Ofsted framework. [5 mins read] Every school today faces an insurmountable impasse: A recent report by the RSA shows that 84% of young people desire to make… Continue Reading →
Risk assessment: Why the Chartered College’s CPD Quality Assurance project might have a negative effect on the value and variety of CPD available to schools. [5 minutes to read] Any quality assurance scheme in education faces a number of serious challenges before even getting off the ground which, if left untackled, could inadvertently lead to… Continue Reading →
“The best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour,” goes a saying in pop psychology. If this is true, things are well and truly looking good for Cooperative Learning in the coming academic year. This article outlines some of my upcoming projects, including SSIF spin-offs, the necessity of separating “Cooperative Learning” from “group work,” a… Continue Reading →
The “CLIP reflection & coaching guide for teachers & TAs” has been included in CPD packs almost as an afterthought since my work with Norwich Primary Academy. However, I have never myself had the opportunity to witness its true power in the hands of two teachers speaking to each other. * includes a link to a… Continue Reading →
I am very honoured to be taking part in the Strategic School Improvement Fund project to raise progress in mathematics for KS2 girls in Norfolk Followers of this blog will be aware of my ongoing work with Sheringham Primary School and Nursery. The teaching school based there, Norfolk’s largest, has made a successful bid for… Continue Reading →
