Ten years of teaching in 30 sentences
I have made rock hard, salty Tudor-style biscuits with a year 4 class that tasted utterly revolting. I have watched a child puke over another […]
Continue reading »Tag: primary education
Improving the readability of text
Before I became a teacher, I worked as a designer, mostly in publishing, after completing a four-year degree in typography and graphic communication – yes, […]
Continue reading »
Creativity in the classroom: myths and strategies
Back in April, I was a mentor at London’s Google innovator Program where I ran a session on strategies to improve creative thinking. Then in […]
Continue reading »
Teaching abstraction in maths
When it comes to reasoning in maths, quite often (assuming they’ve got the arithmetic and calculations bit nailed) what the questions are testing is how […]
Continue reading »
Reflection: The Learning Scientists podcast
Over the summer I got back into running [read: slow jogging] and also added walking into the mix. It turns out that when I run, […]
Continue reading »
The three types of mistake and how to use them in the classroom
When a child makes a mistake in my maths class, my typical response has usually been something along the lines of, “can you spot where you […]
Continue reading »
Time out: another point about teacher workload
Teacher workload. Right. Teachers have a lot to do and there’s a lot being written and talked about in terms of SLTs tackling unnecessary workload, targeting […]
Continue reading »
Developing language in maths
Whether or not you pay much attention to Bloom’s Taxonomy and the like, teaching children how to explain their thinking/working/methods etc in maths is key. […]
Continue reading »
Why do I need to know this?
The idea that the only things worth learning at school are things you are going to need to use later in life annoys me. Of […]
Continue reading »
The 12 Joys of Teaching returns for 2016!
Two years ago, I started The 12 Joys of Teaching as a bit of light relief for teachers during what is often a long, tiring and […]
Continue reading »