Fresh starts are a great time to embed new habits in the classroom. Last year, for me, was all about questioning & boosting ratio. This year I want to work on getting more students to make good choices when it comes to their behaviours for learning. And to help me do that, I’m going to put up my first (small) display at the back of … Continue reading New (academic) year’s resolutions

I know it’s the holidays but it’s been so nice to get back into curriculum thinking again after the admin-laden hell of TAGs and catch up that was the end of last academic year. One aspect of thinking that I am looking to develop is the use of story, narrative and hinterland. Daniel Willingham explains the privileged status of stories1 well, referring to the “The … Continue reading “Storifying” the curriculum

I’ll start out by saying that this is very much an opinion piece as opposed to something backed up by research (or even field testing). But it represents an issue I feel strongly about – that we justify a lot of content taught at KS3 on the basis that it is what we have always done. And yet it is still something we regularly debate … Continue reading Is it time to let MRS GREN die?

I gave a talk at the Seneca Virtual Science Conference on applying the principles of faultless communication (as described in Engelmann & Carnine’s Theory of Instruction) to Science. With it being a 5 minute talk and after a few requests, here’s a blog elaborating on the key ideas. Inductive reasoning Engelmann and Carnine state that we learn from our physical surroundings by inductive reasoning. That … Continue reading Engelmann and faultless communication in Science

Over the past year, I have slowly developed a model of how I atomise and sequence a Biology topic. Part 1 of this series focussed on how I gradually atomise a topic from principles to big questions to sentences to facts and how each level contributes towards the sequencing of the topic into a coherent narrative. Parts 2, 3 and 4 will then explore how … Continue reading A model for sequencing in Biology – part 3

Over the past year, I have slowly developed a model of how I atomise and sequence a Biology topic. Part 1 of this series focussed on how I gradually atomise a topic from principles to big questions to sentences to facts and how each level contributes towards the sequencing of the topic into a coherent narrative. Parts 2, 3 and 4 will then explore how … Continue reading A model for sequencing in Biology – part 2

Over the past year, I have slowly developed a model of how I atomise and sequence a Biology topic. I’ve put together a series of blog posts that outline this model and also what it ends up looking like in the classroom. The biggest influences on this model are Pritesh Raichura’s blog on designing a Science curriculum and Kris Boulton’s “My best planning” series, particularly … Continue reading A model for sequencing in Biology