David Didau | The Learning Spy
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Brain food for the thinking teacher. Over the past 15 years, David Didau has worked with hundreds of schools in the UK & overseas. He leads bespoke training & provides consultancy on a wide range of topics including behaviour management, education research, whole-school literacy, curriculum design and more.
David Didau | The Learning Spy
3w ago
This post is an extract from Bringing the English Curriculum to Life. In order to teach responsively, teachers need to be able to quickly identify misconceptions and check students’ understanding. A hinge question is a diagnostic tool deployed at a point in a lesson – the hinge – where teachers need to know whether ..read more
David Didau | The Learning Spy
4M ago
In spite of our best efforts, the academic performance of our most and least advantaged students stubbornly refuses to close. In fact, as a recent report from the Education Policy Institute shows, the gap seems to be getting wider. Nationally, disadvantaged students at the end of primary school were 10.3 months behind their peers ..read more
David Didau | The Learning Spy
5M ago
Following a recommendation from Sam Freedman, I've recently devoured Dan Davies's The Unaccountability Machine. It's an attempt to analyse 'what's gone wrong' in what we might call The West over the past decade or so through the lens of cybernetics. I know, right? If your first thought is to assume that this must have ..read more
David Didau | The Learning Spy
6M ago
Beyond the notion that it's nice for students to chat, or 'do oracy,' is there any real merit in getting them to talk to each other during lessons? Recently on Twitter, Barry Smith got in touch to go over all the things he sees that regularly go wrong with 'turn & talk': Kids don’t ..read more
David Didau | The Learning Spy
11M ago
Since taking the plunge with mini-whiteboards (see this post) over the past few years my ability to know whether students are paying attention, thinking and practising has dramatically increased. Because I'm usually teaching groups of children I've not met before, I always draw out a seating plan and make sure I have everyone's names ..read more
David Didau | The Learning Spy
11M ago
It's become increasingly clear to me that training teachers on how to use pedagogical techniques is of limited use. Over the past year or so I've lost count of the times I've watched a teacher act on feedback, improve how how they are, say, cold calling, or using a visualiser or mini-whiteboard, and yet ..read more
David Didau | The Learning Spy
11M ago
Having just gotten around to reading Matthew Evans' blog, The Earned Autonomy Trap, I feel moved to break my blogging silence of the past few months. In my book, Intelligent Accountability, I present earned autonomy as one of the principles required to balance trust and accountability and help create the conditions for teachers to ..read more
David Didau | The Learning Spy
1y ago
Since January 2020 I've been working for Omiston Academies Trust as their Senior Lead for English. Over that time I and the amazing team of lead practitioners I lead have created what we think is a fantastic English curriculum. Not only have we been working on a book which will explain the entire process ..read more
David Didau | The Learning Spy
2y ago
According to TeacherTapp, 72% primary and 45% secondary teachers use mini whiteboards (MWBs.) There are big variations between different subjects in secondaries with 69% of MFL and 57% science teachers claiming to use them but just 28% of English teachers. Why might this be? Are MFL and science lessons just better suited to using MWBs ..read more
David Didau | The Learning Spy
2y ago
Working across 43 schools means I get to see a lot of English lessons and talk to a fair number of English teachers. In oder to support our teachers we've been working on identifying what we think are high impact, low effort approaches to teaching English that any teacher could adopt or adapt. I've learned ..read more