" Oh this learning, what a thing it is"- The Taming of the Shrew, Act 1 Scene 2
At the bottom of the road near our school, there's a little cut-through called Crick Lane. It's a really helpful shortcut if you're aiming to avoid rush-hour traffic on the A41, but unfortunately it's also a fly-tipping hotspot. In spite of council efforts to clean this area regularly, they can't compete with the people who … Continue reading Crick Lane Chronicles- Year 10 Creative Writing
I feel very proud to share the same corridors as an award-winning leader! Mick McCarthy is Head of Technology at King Edward VI Handsworth School for Girls and was recently awarded the ENTHUSE Award for School and College Leadership in STEM. Mick has made excellent progress in transforming his department since joining the school; he … Continue reading TLA Meets: Award-winning STEM Leader, Mick McCarthy
In this first instalment of 'The Learning Addict Meets', I met with Jon Neale to talk about how the Google Add-On 'Mote' can add value to your online feedback and help save time. In this session, Jon demonstrates Mote's features and explains how Mote can benefit teachers in a whole host of ways. What are … Continue reading TLA Meets: Jon Neale, Digital Learning Lead and Mote expert!
Beyond using Microsoft Teams/ Google Classroom (other lesson streaming programmes are available!), there are a whole host of useful websites that can help to support the delivery of online lessons. Here a few tried and tested ones that you may find useful. 1.) Whiteboard.fi https://whiteboard.fi/ Great for: Any online whiteboard work- very useful with a … Continue reading 5 useful websites to support remote learning
COVID19 has impacted our professional lives significantly. Many things we would just do as second nature- looking over a student's shoulder at their work, sitting next to them to give quiet feedback and support, circulating our classrooms all now require second thoughts and even a mental COVID risk assessment. With national lockdowns imminent (as of … Continue reading Remote Teaching- some thoughts and some possible models for implementation
NACE Report Review- December 2020 The title of NACE’s most eagerly-awaited recent research report is very apt indeed- the question remains: do we truly make enough space in our schools for all of our learners to flourish? But what does it really mean to ‘make space’ to allow the highest levels of cognitive challenge in … Continue reading Book Review: ‘Making Space for More Able Learners’ published by NACE 2020
I woke up at 5am this morning with my 9 week-old son. I went downstairs to do the morning feed and unlocked my phone to see that I’d received an email through the contact page of this website. It doesn’t happen very often- there’s an occasional flurry of activity, but it’s rare- so I always … Continue reading A timely reminder…
It's 5pm on Friday 5th June and I've decided to stop and to just do some thinking. It's all too easy at a time like this to just carry on- to take action, to plough on through until the bitter end. It's far too easy to forget to take stock of where we've been, what … Continue reading Leadership Lessons from Lockdown
The Challenge: Getting students to think in a more critical and conceptualised way (especially in English Literature GCSE/ A level study). What sort of issues have you identified? In English, students seemed very comfortable with the knowledge that they had gained in a particular unit (they have their own views on characters/ ideas/ themes present … Continue reading Teacher, ‘Try Me’ No. 7: Complex Graphic Organisers
Problem: Students are not able to place texts within relevant social and historical contexts; In written work at KS3 to A level, students make vague and generalised comments when linking texts to their contextsStudents have little understanding of texts in the literary canon written during the C19th. How we’ve tried to fix it: In previous years, … Continue reading C19th Texts at KS3 Scheme Available!
