Blog of the Week: 11 December 2020 – Pupils can learn more effectively through stories than activities

A randomised controlled trial found that children learn about evolution more effectively when engaged through stories read by the teacher, than through doing tasks to demonstrate the same concept.

The scientists investigated several different methods of teaching evolution in primary schools, to test whether a pupil-centred approach (where pupils took part in an activity) or a teacher-centred approach (where pupils were read a story by the teacher), led to a greater improvement in understanding of the topic.

They also looked at whether using human-based examples of evolution (comparing arm bones in humans with those in animals), or more abstract examples that were harder to emotionally engage with (comparing the patterns of trilobites), produced better…

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Blog of the Week: 12 September 2019 – Great Teaching: The Power of Questioning

teacherhead

In my Learning Rainforest and Evidence-informed practice CPD sessions, a core element is a focus on the power of questioning.  In my view, good in-house CPD and feedback from lesson observation should put teachers’ capacity and confidence with questioning at the centre.  In my experience, great questioning is the hallmark of a really effective teacher and sits right at the top of the list for things teachers can and should improve.  It’s far far more important to support teachers with questioning than, for example, to fuss about the quality of their marking or accuracy of their data entry.

As I’ve explored elsewhere, there is good evidence for the role questioning plays in securing strong outcomes.  It’s the frontline of formative assessment and the key tool in responsive teaching.  Teachers need feedback to them from multiple students in order to gauge how successful they have been in securing learning from their…

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Blog of the Week: 15 March 2019 – Messy Planning: Part Two

All Ears

If you don’t plan lessons, what do you do during your planning and preparation time?

In the first of this series of blog posts, I explained that I rarely employ the use of written lesson plans or presentation software to guide the direction of my lessons. I also asserted that it’s my use of planning and preparation (P+P) time that allows me to work this way.

The short answer to the question that opens this post is: I read. My reading can be split into two sorts: Pedagogical reading and subject reading. Because I spend as much as my P+P time reading, I believe I am a better teacher. I’d even go as far to say that if I spent my time endlessly creating Lesson Plans or PowerPoint presentations during my P+P time, instead of reading, I (emphasis on ‘I’) would be a worse teacher because of it. For me…

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Blog of the Week: 1 March 2019 – Engelmann’s Direct Instruction: I’m a Convert

Blog of the Week: 8 February 2019 – Core and hinterland: What’s what and why it matters

A Chemical Orthodoxy

In 1918, the Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded to a war criminal.

In the early years of the 20th century, German scientist Fritz Haber developed a process to artificially synthesise ammonia, a vital component of agricultural fertilisers. A reaction that changed the world, his process drove a ballooning in industrial agriculture and, with the fullness of time, allowed for a population explosion and the pulling of billions of people out of poverty.

But Haber’s oeuvre extended from the globally beneficial to the sinister. A fervent nationalist, in World War I he turned his brilliance to the German war effort and pioneered the use of chemical weaponry on the battlefield, personally supervising the first administration of deadly chlorine gas in the trenches of Flanders.

Despite these contributions to the Fatherland, Haber was forced to leave Germany because he had Jewish ancestry: an ancestry he despised. In a grimly ironic turn…

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Blog of the Week: 5 October 2018 – Beyond Knowledge Organisers; building the best curriculum in the world.

Pedfed

TL;DR Scroll to the bottom for the Medieval Monarchs booklet. You’re welcome.

In this blog I explain the journey that we have taken at Reach Academy around curriculum design. It is a VERY long blog (over 4000 words, which will take the average reader about half an hour) in which I explore common practices in primary around the foundation subjects, and why I think they’re problematic. I discuss the difficulty with doing the ‘right thing’ (for both teacher and pupil) and lay out the problem of being a generalist expected to design and deliver specialist content. Then I detail our solution, and the some of the evidence from research that underpins it. I think that it is probably useful for teachers of all phases.

Some of you may have seen the excerpts from a booklet that I posted on twitter, so if you’re short on time and would just like…

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Blog of the Week: 8 June 2018 – What is a knowledge-rich curriculum? Principle and Practice.

teacherhead

I have found recent discussions and debates about the concept of a ‘knowledge-rich curriculum’  – or knowledge-led; knowledge-based – fascinating.   Some of this has been explored brilliantly in various blogs.  Here is a selection:

• Summer Turner https://ragazzainglese.wordpress.com/2018/02/14/pub-quiz-or-published-what-are-the-aims-of-a-knowledge-rich-curriculum/
• Jon Brunskill  I’m bringing knowledge back. | Pedfed   which is worth reading along with his school’s website info on curriculum.  Reach Academy Feltham |Approach to Curriculum Design
• Ben Newmark. Planning a knowledge curriculum.
• Rosalind Walker.  My #rEDBrum talk: The Nature of School Science Knowledge
• Mark Enser: Knowledge in the classroom | Teaching it Real
• Rebecca Foster and Claire Hill: On our #rEDDurrington presentation: Practical approaches to bringing research-informed practice to the classroom, the department and whole school | The Learning Profession

There are also numerous blogs from Michael Fordham (Knowledge and curriculum – Clio et cetera), Clare Sealy (Memory not memories – teaching for long term learning…

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Blog of the Week: 18 May 2018 – This much I know about…subject specific pedagogy

johntomsett

I have been a teacher for 29 years, a Headteacher for 14 years and, at the age of 53, this much I know about subject specific pedagogy.

Recently, I have been posing a question to anyone who teaches which goes something like this: “What are the specific hallmarks of pedagogy in your subject?” It is a question which initially stumps most people. General responses, such as “modelling”, are not really specific – most subject teachers use modelling techniques as part of their pedagogic armoury. If someone offers “modelling” in answer to my question, I then ask, “But what modelling technique is specific to the subject content you are teaching and how does that modelling technique you use in your subject differ from how another colleague teaching a different subject might use modelling as a pedagogic tool?” That usually results in the person I am interrogating saying that they need to…

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