Many of the students in my examination classes are struggling to engage in online learning and need ways to boost their motivation. They are unsure of the merit of spending time learning new content and practicing examination questions, as they feel that their grades will be generated from data that has already been collected. It […]
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A game of snakes and ladders – that is how my 9-year-old son describes lockdown. This piqued my interest, and I was drawn away from my online virtual marking and gazed at him across the kitchen table to ask him to explain his metaphor. Zac is in Year 5 in an expanding multiphase academy, where […]
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In my experience over the past few years of researching metacognition and delivering CPD to teachers, it seems the biggest issue teachers have with metacognition is not the theory itself, or even the strategies for applying it in the classroom, but rather the barriers to successful implementation. With the best will in the world, and […]
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Public examinations are another casualty of the pandemic. The 2020 cohort saw centre assessed grades generated, by using the full range of available evidence to generate a fair and objective judgement of the grade each student would have got if the exams had been sat, along with a rank order of students [1]. This information […]
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So, we are now in July, and according to the government, we are through the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic and life is beginning to break out of lockdown. We have had about a quarter of the calendar year and more than ten teaching weeks away from our classrooms and we are starting to welcome […]
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I’m on the “coronacoaster”: one minute I’m up and the next I’m down – it’s an emotional rollercoaster. Most of the time, I feel like it’s all fine and we are just in a new normal, but in the blink of an eye, I’m flying by the seat of my pants, heading down with the […]
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Head of Biology Amelia Kyriakides discusses the ways in which her department has adapted to home learning and how the strategies they’ve developed will continue to benefit her GCSE cohorts on their return to school. For many of us, adapting for home learning meant rapidly rethinking lesson planning. Quick decisions needed to be made based […]
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Life is full of change, now more than ever with the corona crisis unfolding. But life will go on, and we are now venturing into opening our schools and creating a new normal. At this time of year, I would usually be working closely with our primary colleagues to help with transition projects to reduce the […]
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Teachers have had to respond to the challenge of the school closures due to COVID-19. Just as we are getting used to a ‘new normal,’ we are having to adapt to the uncertainty and difficulty of the recovery period. Despite our best efforts to deliver our existing curricula, its impact will be greatly variable for […]
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As the coronavirus pandemic hit, we were told to wash our hands for at least 20 seconds with soap or detergent several times a day. However, many people also called for alcohol gels to be made available in many workplaces, including schools. So, what is the difference between all these different methods of cleaning our […]
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