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Top Down Planning
According to Carole Dweck in her book Mindset, having higher expectations of people can lead to improvements in their levels of attainment. Believing there is a ceiling to one’s achievement creates a...
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#TLAB13
I’m at the Teaching, Learning and Assessment conference in Berkhamsted today, organised by Dr Nick Dennis. Like SHP last summer, I will be attempting to liveblog each of the three keynotes and three...
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TLAB13 Keynote 1: Alistair Smith
50,000 chunks: how we become experts and what it means for us. Great teachers interleave different strategies. Alistair implores us to reclaim language from Ofsted: make teaching pupil-centred again....
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TLAB13 first workshop: John Mitchell
A History session, John is talking about signposting progress and promises we will all have something we can slot into our lessons straight away. There is certainly a good booklet of stuff to take...
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TLAB13 second workshop: Neal Watkin
Neal begins by talking about the classroom rules for quality writing: practice makes perfect. Make it meaningful. We then have a mystery: who is Noor Inayat Khan and why is she significant? How certain...
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Second Keynote: Bill Lucas
Expansive Education: what is is, why it really matters and what we might like to do about it. @eed_net We begin with some puzzles to warm up, showing how context is important and it’s important to hold...
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Workshop three: David Rogers
Inspirational Geography David starts with a starter idea: show the image on Bing and get students to predict what jobs are to do with that image. “With Google you can pretend to be educated.” “If we...
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Third Keynote: Bill Rankin
Bill Rankin on sustainable learning in the post-PC world. He starts with a short history of indoor lighting. He asks: which light is best? Depends on what you’re trying to achieve – mood? Quality?...
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#TLAB13 – Quick Wins
Year 8 preparing for their assessment on the British Empire, based on Neal Watkin’s plan for improving standards in writing. Two of my students bravely filmed their conversation in The Cupboard Of...
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Behaviour Management Musings
I responded to a tweet from @GuardianTeach about managing classroom behaviour today. I got a lot of retweets and several disagree-ers, most of whom seemed to read my tweet and make enormous...
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Boosting progress: a Teachmeet/TLAB mash up
I’ve been very focused this year on improving outcomes for students at key stage three. Last year I introduced the verbal assessment, which worked extremely well; but some students struggled to...
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Edfest: Wilshaw
Wilshaw encourages us to be bold. We can’t go back, he says, to a system of bland reports from perfunctory inspections of the 70s and 80s. Even in 1992, 40% of children didn’t achieve 5A-Cs. Now more...
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Edfest: Leadership for the Future
Chris Husbands from the Institute of Education talking about future school leaders. Wooden floor and lots of late comers making it difficult to hear and follow the first part. Are we heading for a...
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Edfest: Guy Claxton
Claxton was so popular in his first session that Katie Price was bumped into lunch and he’s repeating his session, which is again full. He starts by talking about useful attitude for life. This is...
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Edfest: debate – the future for schools
This promises to be interesting. Claxton on skills vs Christodoulou on knowledge vs Jan Hodges, CEO of a vocational education foundation. Where are schools going to be in 15-20 years time, asks Ian...
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Edfest: Dylan Wiliam
Dylan is talking about leadership for better teaching. He starts by pointing out issues with educational research: it tells you what was, not what might be, and mostly doesn’t consider the conditions...
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Edfest: Gove
Not too many notes for this one: too busy listening! Gove succinctly summarises the current debate in education, between knowledge and skills, saying that he feels the more traditional agenda has had a...
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Edfest: Tom Sherrington
The room is packed for @headguruteacher speaking on Rigour, Agility, Awe and Joy. Ten great lessons he has seen. Effectiveness, excitement, high quality. The room is rammed, with people crowded round...
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Edfest: What children should know debate
Fergal Keane chairs. Toby Young first, free school founder and journalist. He thinks there should be less emphasis on skills and more emphasis on knowledge. Forget the child-centred stuff! We should...
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Edfest: E.D.Hirsch
Speaking on Skype about a conservative curriculum for disadvantaged children. He realised that a certain amount of background knowledge is assumed and called this cultural literacy, and that this is...
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