With last week’s decision to close schools leaving teachers across the country reeling, we’ve compiled some ‘top tips’ to help facilitate the transition to remote learning. Firstly, instructions are everything Setting clear instructions and success criteria will be crucial to avoid a tsunami of emails asking the same thing and in providing zero excuses for pupils looking to avoid work. Model answers […]
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How many of our students rely mainly on reading through notes or revision guides, thinking this is how to revise? Unfortunately they are practising recognition, not free recall, and it can be very misleading. They feel they know the material because they have learnt it a few months ago and recognise it, but this is […]
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Back in 2008, the business professor Clayton Christensen predicted that by 2019, half of all US high school classes would be taken online. It’s now 2020 and this prediction has not come true, in the US or any other country. Why is this? Is it fundamentally impossible to get remote learning to work as well as […]
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As a teacher, I am always striving for ways to determine if students are making progress, hoping to identify those pupils who would benefit most from targeted intervention and also to give context to parents to help them understand if their child is doing OK. At my school, we need target grades for every student and […]
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Are you heading to the Association of Language Learning conference this weekend? Here, authors of ¡Claro! José and Tony share what they’re looking forward to… Of Primary Importance One of the first things that struck us when we received the programme for Language World 2020 was the healthy number of talks and workshops relating to primary language learning. We […]
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Journey’s End is a tragic play and one with valuable lessons about the futility of war – but maybe none more powerful than those Hibbert seems designed to convey. Sherriff described his characters as ‘simple, unquestioning men’ but Hibbert is far from either. As a construct, Hibbert enables Sherriff to show that some of the […]
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What skills will be needed in the economy of the future? Suppose a friend came to you and told you they wanted to visit Siberia for the whole of next February. They want to prepare for their visit, and to do so they need a precise weather forecast. They want to know exactly what temperature […]
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The History community – in fact, the teaching world in general – seems to have gone ‘knowledge-rich’ mad over the past year or so. Social media platforms and discussion groups seem to be awash with knowledge organisers and knowledge workbooks, and lots of techniques and strategies to recall, retain, retrieve and then write about knowledge. […]
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Daisy Christodoulou talks about some of the important questions and popular ed tech ideas she explores in her new book, Teachers vs Tech? The case for an ed tech revolution. As long ago as 1913, people were predicting that technology was going to transform education. “Books will soon be obsolete in the public schools. Scholars […]
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Daisy Christodoulou’s new book, Teachers vs Tech? is all about how we can use technology to improve learning. In this blog post she considers the benefit of spaced repetition algorithms in helping students retain knowledge. Recently, I started flicking through a book I’d read about ten years ago, Juliet Gardiner’s The Thirties: An Intimate History. […]
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