The reformed music A-level examination requires students to think far more synoptically than the previous A-level curriculum. Students now spend two years learn...
Students want to learn, but sometimes they don’t know how to; if it gets too hard or too intense too quickly then they give up, fade out or disengage – the same...
A student misconception, for a teacher, is similar to what a fever is for a medical practitioner: it is an unequivocal indicator that something is amiss.
Ofs...
A relatively incontrovertible aim of education is to enable students to become independent in their learning, equipping them with the skills to make strategic a...
As a newly qualified teacher (NQT), I have spent a significant amount of time since my initial teacher training reflecting on my practice and how to maximise my...
Last year, I read an article outlining the work that Helen Lewis had done around metacognition with young children. Lewis’s study followed a group of four- to s...
In 2017, the Cultural Learning Alliance published an updated version of their ‘Key research findings’, which explores large-scale research into the impact of ar...
The basis of teaching in a practical classroom, such as art and design or design technology, is the much repeated and reliable teacher-led demonstration. These ...
We began teaching our subjects to pass on our knowledge and passion, but with our busy daily working and personal lives we sometimes forget to ‘feed’ the very f...
Able, interested and motivated (AIM) is a term used by a small number of schools in the South West of England, to refer to pupils who have the motivation to pur...
Rosenshine’s principles of instruction (2012) offer 10 research-based strategies with suggestions for classroom practice. Here, I discuss how principles one and...
I am a confirmed, incurable Bardolator. My first brush with Shakespeare was a striking promenade performance of Macbeth at the Arcola Theatre when I was thirtee...
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...
All experts constantly reflect upon what they are doing and how they are progressing (Stobart, 2014). If our students are to be expert learners, they must be ab...
Retrieval practice in the form of multiple-choice testing has been shown to be successful as a learning strategy, including in the primary classroom (McDaniel e...
Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) has recently become ‘The Next Big Thing’ in teaching. Dylan Wiliam tweeted on 26 January 2017 that he had ‘come to the conclusion Sw...
Amanda Spielman (Spielman, 2017) has said ‘at the very heart of education sits the vast accumulated wealth of human knowledge and what we choose to impart to th...
In one of our Year 10 lessons this week, Salim called out ‘Does it have to look like that?’ His exaggeratedly aghast manner suggested several things all at once...
Interest is an elusive state, one which everyone experiences at some point but one which is often difficult to define. A wide range of terms are used by some a...
In 2014, I followed an interdisciplinary arts project called ‘Songlines’, delivered over two terms by The Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester. It aimed to:
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