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Early Teaching Career Guidance
Evidence-Informed Ideas Every Teacher Should Know About.
I love the idea of ‘evidence-informed wisdom’. I honestly can’t remember where I first encountered this but, essentially, it’s the idea that, as teachers we are faced with making hundreds of decisions a day – largely about how to question, how to motivate and how to adjust explanations, feedback, and the pace and depth of … Continue reading
Ten teaching techniques to practise – deliberately.
It’s a well-established idea that, to develop expertise in a particular skill or technique, you need to practise. The more you practise, the better you get. As outlined by the excellent people at Deans for Impact in their Practice with Purpose document, it helps to identify a specific element of your teaching to practise on and … Continue reading
A Blog Blog: The things that seem to matter
When I started this blog, I didn’t really expect very much. As a veteran bedroom-studio musician, I’m used to the tumbleweed of indifference to my creations. I flogged my music through MySpace for a couple of years and got absolutely nowhere beyond a few scraps of encouragement. So, with low expectations to start with, the … Continue reading
10 Reasons to Love Teaching
1. Doing the things you love while you’re at work It has always struck me as remarkable and fortuitous that I am paid to do a job where I get to have so much fun. In my lessons, I have the chance to explore my favourite subject – Physics. Today I was talking about space, … Continue reading
New Challenge? Advice for getting that job.
Very often I’m asked for advice from teachers applying for jobs, either colleagues or friends. Each person’s context is unique to them but the messages are usually the same so I thought I would share them. As a Headteacher, getting the right people into the right roles within my school is one of the most … Continue reading
12 steps to a ‘Great Teacher’ reputation.
Introduction. I’m celebrating writing my 100th post, by trying to link together various posts relating to teaching. I suggest in my post ‘How do I know how good my teachers are?’ that there are three key sources that contribute to my judgement of the effectiveness of my teaching staff: Data – the measured outcomes from … Continue reading
Behaviour Management: A Bill Rogers Top 10
Behaviour Management Strategies from Bill Rogers Without doubt the greatest personal challenge I’ve faced as a teacher was moving from the Sixth Form college in Wigan where I started teaching, to Holland Park School in London in my mid-20s. Having established the idea in my mind that I was a pretty good teacher, it was … Continue reading
Making Feedback Count: “Close the Gap”
Recently I have been looking again at the issue of marking. It is a hugely important source of feedback provided that we keep the volume of marking in proportion to the level of impact it can have in improving learning outcomes. I’ve discussed this in a much-read earlier post: Marking in Perspective: Selective, Formative, Effective, … Continue reading
Gifted and Talented provision: a total philosophy
One of my core beliefs as a teacher: G&T is a total philosophy of teaching and learning. At both a pedagogical and strategic leadership level, I’d argue that cracking the issue of ‘G&T’ provision is the key to success – in the classroom and across the whole school. In fact, I think that if the … Continue reading
To maximise learning, get your students RAMPed
The acid test of any CPD is probably that, many years later, you remember it and you use it. One example for me was a nugget of gold from Trevor Hawes, (Optimal Learning) who came to Jakarta when I was at the British International School there. He summarised the need to create the right conditions … Continue reading
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