Not all teachers can say that they went to school on the last Monday before half term with a spring in their step. I, however, did exactly that. It was the first day back after ‘The Big Day’… not the Royal Wedding nor not the FA Cup Final, but the Historical Association Conference 2018. I […]
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This month we’re welcoming Tony Weston and José Antonio García Sánchez, Languages leads and authors of ¡Claro! KS3 Spanish . We love to hear what you would add to this list? Mi clase es tu clase Whether your languages department has a very clearly defined area in your school building, or if you are lucky enough to teach […]
Read moreLines, squares or plain? The pages of maths exercise books, I mean. For years I have insisted that pages have to have squares. Without vertical lines as well as horizontal ones how could my students possibly draw all the right-angled triangles and bearing North lines and coordinate axes and so on that I would tell […]
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As History teachers, we are just about to embark on ‘exam madness’ season. We have precious little time left with our exam classes. We will be prepping and delivering extra revision sessions on top of completing all of the other tasks that are part and parcel of our profession. So it is no surprise that […]
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Where to start? I’m someone who likes to keep mixing things up to see if new combinations of ingredients result in surprising and delicious outcomes, like Heston Blumenthal’s egg and bacon ice cream. Enjoying the freedom of being able to teach topics in any order, I can’t resist tweaking the Scheme of Work to see […]
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This month we’re delighted to be welcoming back David Shanks with his second post about preparing for GCSE 9-1. Have an effective and organised general approach Measuring what works in education is a notoriously tricky business with so many variables acting upon the learning process. However, advances in the world of cognitive science and educational […]
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By Jean Gross CBE, formerly the government’s Communication Champion for children and young people. Oxford University Press recently published the Oxford Language Report – a study into the effects of the word gap on children’s learning and what we can do to combat this. Here, Jean Gross CBE, offers some practical suggestions about how we […]
Read more By Geoff Barton, General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) Let’s start with what we know: language matters. There. That’s it. Vocabulary is a huge predictor of how far children from any background will succeed at school and beyond. The words they know will help them to read, understand, gain new […]
Read moreJill Carter shares her advice for making the most out of quotations during this revision period. Students, teachers and parents worry about quotations or as they are now acceptably known quotes (in my day that was a verb…). ‘Eek – Macbeth – how can I learn a quote for every possible essay scenario?’ I […]
Read more The first Oxford Language Report finds evidence of a significant word gap in UK schools, a problem which is holding back children’s learning and which teachers believe is getting worse. Here Jane Harley, Strategy Director ED-UK at Oxford University Press, gives some background to the report and explains why closing the word gap matters. Why […]
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