Rudyard Kipling’s The Ballad of East and West contains the famous opening line: Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet. I’ve heard this message echoed in a variety of forms over recent years by educators who are wary, and sometimes sceptical, of the value of mathematics teaching methods […]
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Some stories have a kind of DNA. The characters, themes and ideas pass from story to story, evolving and changing along the way. Each new storyteller adds their own ideas and interprets the characters and the dilemmas they face in new and unexpected ways. In popular culture, we retell these great stories again and again, […]
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In a recent blog post , I talked about the way in which the much-praised Asian education systems are rethinking their ‘grades are everything’ approach to education. It is encouraging to see that they are beginning to realise the importance of a more holistic, child-friendly approach, though I worry that for some years we in the UK […]
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So, horror of all horrors, the dishwasher broke! And to make matters worse it was after a dinner party and we had used every plate, bowl, fork and knife in the place! So, the hunt was on for a new dishwasher and in this I learnt some new Chemistry and am now incorporating my dishwasher […]
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This month our guest blogger is Yvonne Kennedy. Yvonne has been exploring the interconnectivity of skills at KS3 and has some fascinating insights that we thought you might be interested in hearing… Last summer, I was asked to take part in a project on assessment at Key Stage 3 to consider what the Programme of […]
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In a previous blog post I outlined a very basic memory technique which works by creating a story out of to-be-remembered information. This makes the information more memorable than recalling a list of unrelated words and the technique itself requires no real groundwork, after all, you are just making up a story. Whilst impressive results […]
Read moreGiving children the skills to become confident spellers has a huge impact across the curriculum – not only helping them approach their weekly spelling tests with ease, but importantly helping them make effective vocabulary choices in all of their writing. Here are some top tips from our resources to help. Make the most of staff […]
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Right, it’s been a long half term and it’s cold outside, so let’s start with a joke: After a lovely day out in the countryside, a tourist is driving back to his hotel when he realises he’s lost. There’s no mobile phone signal and his satnav isn’t working either. He drives up and down the […]
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We consider that technology should not be used for technology’s sake as this is proven not to improve outcomes. It should only be used when it frees teachers and learners to be more effective in what they do best and that is to teach and to learn.
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When I visited a local school recently I was talking to Martin Heeley who has been working on and developing some ideas I gave him during the course. As we have a focus on the blog about what to keep of the ‘old ways’ and what technology we can harness cheaply or even free to […]
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