Assessing progress at KS3 It’s the issue in KS3 that won’t seem to go away – how do we accurately (and simply) assess what students know and can do at KS3, and what does ‘progression’ look like in History? I know for a fact that teachers have tirelessly grappled with these questions, and probably tried […]
Read moreWith Halloween coming up, we thought we would treat you to a spooky snippet from the fabulous How to Write Your Best Story Ever! by Christopher Edge, to help you create your own terrifying tales… How to write your best SCARY story! What scares you? A haunted house with creaking stairs? A ghostly apparition flitting through the forest? A vampire rising from […]
Read moreFriday 13 October marks the 30th birthday of our favourite witch Winnie and her loyal sidekick Wilbur! Over the past 30 years the Winnie and Wilbur series by Valerie Thomas and Korky Paul has sold over seven million copies in more than 10 languages. 2017 has been an absolute triumph for Winnie and Wilbur as […]
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The Franklin Expedition just gets better and better. The present narration, I mean, not the actual expedition in the 19th century. No, that was a wreck in the icy north, costing the lives of all the men! But it’s a splendid example for Theory of Knowledge of the way the past can be reframed by […]
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As you look at your partner, do you ever think that their brain is vacuous? Well, as I was preparing for a KS3 science lecture about Cryogenic Engineering and its applications, that is exactly what I was left thinking as I dropped in an MRI scan of my partner’s brain into the presentation! To excite […]
Read moreCompetitions are an aspect of resourcing the English curriculum we tend to neglect. In all the frenzy of delivering the curriculum and covering the ground for assessments and exams, we overlook an exciting opportunity. There are a number of benefits to external competitions: They provide students with a real audience. All too often students write […]
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There is often a debate surrounding the age at which children should be taught topics like sex education. Teachers and parents are often divided in opinion – are they just too young? So why are there not debates over when geography students should be exposed to images and video material of major conflicts, global atrocities, […]
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This week, we’re welcoming back Liz Black with her reflections on starting out as a teacher. What advice would you give to new colleagues? I’m sure like me you have found the last few blog posts by Yvonne Kennedy and David Shanks extremely helpful. We can learn so much from other language consultants and teachers, […]
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As we begin the second year of new specifications, it feels as though the attention of many geography departments is once again focused on Key Stage 3, reflecting upon the change required here in order to best prepare our students for what we now know lies ahead. One of the biggest challenges I have found […]
Read more “Alone we go fast, together we go far.” So goes the proverb quoted by a leading neuroscientist involved in a major new project bringing together 21 labs in Europe and the United States for research on the brain. The international team aims to discover “where, when, and how neurons in the brain take information from the outside world, make sense of it, and work out how to respond.” What’s interesting for the Theory of […]
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