Blog of the Week Mike Hobbiss – Stay proud. Stay humble. Stay. My three appeals to new ECTs Well said Mike. A fellow GTP whose story is not unlike my own. It’s easy when you’re still working in schools to look covetously outside. Mike explains why it matters that we try (if we can) to stay put. Class Teaching Jody Chan – Efficient Feedback Jody explains how we can gather responses and give feedback efficiently through a combination of live marking and whole-class feedback. Research School Blog James Crane – Pupil Premium Strategy Statement, Where to start? As we move our attention to ..read more

I spend a lot of time visiting lessons across the school, across all departments.  I have noticed recently that a decent amount of lesson time is sometimes being given up to students feeding back their answers after an independent task.  Following the task, the teacher goes through the questions one by one asking a different student for each answer.  This can take up a significant amount of valuable lesson time.  This is particularly true if the student had not attempted that question and the teacher has to unpick it in front of the whole class and then lead them to the cor ..read more

Blog of the Week Thahmina Begum – Clockwork excellence Consistency and coherence in action. Having been one of those lucky visitors to FGCS I can tell you first hand that this is the genuine lived reality of the school. Theory into practice. Class Teaching Jody Chan – A message to our ECTs Jody gives some suggestions for how our ECTs can pause and reflect at the end of a busy year, but also make use of these last few weeks. Research School Blog Chris Runeckles – Thinking Teaching – How can we drive the thought in our classrooms? A short read this one, focused on sharing our sugg ..read more

Blog of the Week Inner Drive – Effective questioning for Retrieval Practice: What does the latest research say? I love that Inner Drive keep finding more to say on retrieval practice, and that it keeps helping teachers further refine practice. More good stuff here. Class Teaching Jody Chan – A message to our ECTs Jody gives some suggestions for how our ECTs can pause and reflect at the end of a busy year, but also make use of these last few weeks. Research School Blog Chris Runeckles – Thinking Teaching – How can we drive the thought in our classrooms? A short read this one, focused on sharing ..read more

I am always taken a bit by surprise when we are nearly at the end of the academic year, it always seems to go by so fast.  It is at this point we start looking forward to next year and the changes we are hoping to make. I am really lucky that one of my roles in school is ECT Induction Tutor.  I have seen the huge amount of progress that our current cohort have made over the year.  If you reading this as an ECT or you are early in your career, think back to the start of your year in September and think of how far you have come in what is a relatively short period of time.  I ..read more

Blog of the Week Paul Cline – Decomposing decision-making: a cognitive dimension to teacher rehearsal Playing to my interests around the nuances of professional development, I loved this blog from Paul and how we can support the rehearsal of thinking. Class Teaching Shaun Allison – Growing Great Leaders The boss is back and writing about our work this year to codify and exemplify what great leadership looks like at our school. Research School Blog Ben Crockett – Multiple choice questions and accurate assessment Ben gives us this short summary of Evidence Based Education’s review ..read more

Here at Durrington we have understood, for a number of years now, the importance of being explicit about how we teach.  Our six principles have been widely documented on this blog and in our book ‘Making Every Lesson Count’.  To support this, we spend a great deal of time talking together as a team of teachers about how we enact these principles in lessons – at a whole school level and even more importantly, at a subject level.  To quote Professor Jonathan Sharples, ‘It is what you do and, and the way that you do it’. It has become clear to us that we’ve been less explicit abou ..read more

Blog of the Week Inner Drive – The link between pre-questions and Metacognition I’m a big advocate for the teaching of metacognitive strategies, particularly how questioning can be a great way to make this slipperiest of concepts real, so really enjoyed this! Class Teaching Fahim Rahman – Applying Cognitive Load Theory in Science Fahim takes another look at his science classroom, this time through the cognitive load theory lens. Research School Blog Ben Crockett – Implementation Outcomes: Stepping Stones to Effective Implementation Ben reviews the implementation outcom ..read more

Blog of the Week Dan Nicholls – Privileging disadvantage | Excellence, Equity, Culture There will be something (probably several things) in this blog that resonates with anyone engaged in tackling educational disadvantage. Some really clear thinking from Dan Nicholls. Class Teaching Fahim Rahman – Applying Cognitive Load Theory in Science Fahim takes another look at his science classroom, this time through the cognitive load theory lens. Research School Blog Ben Crockett – Implementation Outcomes: Stepping Stones to Effective Implementation Ben reviews the implementation outcomes ide ..read more

Mentoring finds me observing lessons from a new perspective, watching from the back of the room to see what class is like from a student’s point of view. My observations are fully focused on our brilliant trainee, until that is I realise that the border on the notice board is half torn off, or that a part of the whiteboard hadn’t been erased, or my rooms untidiness (not my fault might I add) is distracting me.  It was during one of these distractions that I was reminded of cognitive load theory. Based on the work of Sweller (1986), cognitive load is the amount of information that our work ..read more