teacherhead
learning
Re-reading Nuthall’s Hidden Lives of Learners. Insights from a classic.
“If we are to understand how teaching relates to learning, we have to begin at the closest point to that learning; and that is students’ experience.” Nuthall. 2001. Lots of people have written reviews of Graham Nuthall’s Hidden Lives of Learners published posthumously in 2007. It’s often cited as a must-read by conference speakers, including … Continue reading
Mindsets vs Metacognition. Two EEF reports and a clear conclusion.
At ResearchEd in Cape Town I presented a workshop exploring two relatively recent reports from the Education Endowment Foundation – the 2018 guidance report Metacognition and Self-regulated Learning, and the 2019 report Changing Mindsets: Effectiveness Trial. Essentially, my argument is that these papers support the view – one that makes sense to me – that … Continue reading
A glossary of terms to help us discuss learning.
Increasingly I find that there’s a whole language that teachers would benefit from sharing so that, when we’re talking about learning, we are talking about the same things. The list could be very long – and I’m happy to add to this over time – but how about this for a start: (*Recency and … Continue reading
From “I’ve done it” to “I’ve learned it”. Terminate the tyranny of the task.
If you go into lessons as an observer, it’s pretty standard to sit alongside a student and to engage in a short discussion about their work. I might say ‘hello, tell me what you’re doing this lesson’. The normal response is ‘I’m doing this sheet’ – as the student points to the worksheet task in … Continue reading
Engineering Success. A positive alternative to generic mindset messaging
In general I find that there is still far too much emphasis in schools on the generic language of growth mindset, the learning pit, resilience, ‘learning to learn’ and broad-brush life-goal motivation. This has its place at the level of a broad ethos in a school. It’s all part of creating the positive ‘feels’ we … Continue reading
Studying successfully: motivation + strategy + habit
At home we’re in the midst of another exam window. My son has an AS and several internal Y12 exams to prepare for. As I documented last year during his GCSEs, I feel that it’s generally a positive process for him. He works hard and learns a lot in the process. I think there are … Continue reading
10 Techniques for Retrieval Practice
Image Credit: https://emptechgroup.com/the-internet-of-things/ I’ve written about retrieval practice several times in other posts but here I just want to make it easy to lay out various alternative methods for the process of reviewing your students’ knowledge and understanding. Before doing that, I would suggest that there are some key principles: Involve everyone: Good techniques involve … Continue reading
Teaching for Recall, Fluency and Understanding: Blog round-up for easy access.
Recent blogs on teacherhead.com have had a certain theme around teaching for recall, fluency and understanding. Here is a round-up so people can access them easily all in one place: Two influential papers: Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction: A blog exploring this key paper using four simple themes, now with a new graphic by Oliver Caviglioli. … Continue reading
Saffron Walden County High School: An exemplary school. The Learning Rainforest made real.
Last week I spent a day visiting Saffron Walden County High School in the North-West corner of Essex. This was the result of a conversation with Head and CEO, Caroline Derbyshire who suggested that I should consider writing a ‘Learning Rainforest in Action’ follow-up book. Having read the original book, Caroline felt that SWCHS embodied … Continue reading
@teacherhead Update #1. October ’18.
Introducing…. This is the first of what I hope will be a half-termly update, highlighting trends and ideas that I pick up in my work across various schools and colleges and through my engagement with online discussions, blogs, conferences and publications. It will also highlight some of the content on this blog that has gained … Continue reading
Recent Comments