The Learning Skills curriculum: Raising the bar, closing the gap at GCSE

JAMES MANNION, KATE MCALLISTER and NEIL MERCERSeptember 2018

In recent years, there has been much debate about whether schools should aim to teach students generic learning skills, or whether they should focus instead on ...

Planning, lessons and learning0 Comments26 min read

A template to trigger and capture improved thinking on curriculum and assessment

HELEN RALSTONSeptember 2018

The Rise – the first school to be opened by Ambitious about Autism Schools Trust, a multi-academy trust for students with an EHCP (education, health and care pl...

Planning, lessons and learning0 Comments5 min read

A design for life – curriculum and assessment for long-term learning

PHILIP STOCKSeptember 2018

The when, how and why of assessment are ultimately dependent on what is being assessed, namely the curriculum. Like many schools, we spent a lot of time redesig...

Open AccessPlanning, lessons and learning0 Comments5 min read

Organising knowledge: The purpose and pedagogy of knowledge organisers

MARK MILLERSeptember 2018

A knowledge organiser (KO) sets out the important, useful and powerful knowledge on a topic on a single page (Kirby, 2015). With the content demands of new cour...

Planning, lessons and learning5 Comments8 min read

Learning conversations: Teacher researchers evaluating dialogic strategies in early years settings

PETE BOYDSeptember 2018

This article is based on an original research article published in the International Journal of Early Years Education (Boyd, 2014a). The full article can be fou...

Planning, lessons and learning0 Comments12 min read

Pedagogical patterns: Solving problems in curriculum design

KATIE CORKSeptember 2018

I don’t need to tell you that teachers face a myriad of problems as they design a curriculum, develop a scheme of work or plan a lesson. The list of requirement...

Planning, lessons and learning0 Comments7 min read

Exploring learning dispositions as a means of enhancing the transition from early years to primary school

Karen McNerneySeptember 2018

In the summer of 2010, I spent three weeks in a kindergarten in New Zealand as part of the research for my doctoral thesis. I was there to gain an insight into ...

Planning, lessons and learning0 Comments6 min read

Planning for deep learning across the curriculum

Rebecca GoughSeptember 2018

Since the introduction of the new National Curriculum in 2014, our school’s aim has been to design a curriculum that meets the needs of the students at our scho...

Planning, lessons and learning0 Comments6 min read

Using theories of task design in curriculum planning

Lorna ShiresSeptember 2018

The importance of the curriculum in effective teaching Walter Doyle’s seminal paper ‘Effective teaching’, written over thirty years ago (Doyle, 1985), argues...

Planning, lessons and learning1 Comment10 min read

Practical approaches to embedding research in schools: Key learning and reflections from the Research in Schools Learning Community

SUE SING, LAELA ADAMSON, IRO KONSTANTINOU, SUSAN GRAHAM, RACHEL STENHOUSE, ANNA WICKING, PIPPA WADEY, SAM ROWDEN-KNOWLES, EMMA TAYLOR and HAYLEY HEMMINGSeptember 2018

In 2017, the Department for Education published a report that examined the progress of evidenced-informed teaching in England. The findings suggest that despite...

Planning, lessons and learning0 Comments11 min read