In our dept we’ve been looking at various ways of making peer and self assessment more meaningful and at the same time helping to speed up the time it takes us to mark students books at KS3. We’ve been experimenting with various forms of comment stickers, and I thought it would be useful to share […]
Reading for a purpose
I remember being impressed at a session at an SHP conference a while ago about getting A Level students to ‘read for a purpose’ and what an impact it made on their motivation, their learning and their recall. Recently I’ve been seeing for myself what an impact this can have across the year groups, so […]
All vote now…
A couple of quick body smart ideas when it comes to getting feedback on an issue after a debate or discussion with a class. They both use the principle of the students using their location in the classroom to show their opinions on a particular issue.Four corners Students move to one of the corners to […]
Barriers to learning #4 – Examinations
This is the final of four posts (for now) looking at various barriers to learning inherent in the current education system. Once upon a time, exams were like currency. They were a short hand for your ability, and they were used both by ‘centres of higher learning’ (as my old VC used to say) and […]
Barriers to learning #3 – The factory system
I recently added two posts on ‘barriers to learning’ – the year group and the timetable . This post and tomorrow’s post will extend that idea to look at two larger scale problems – the nature of the ‘education system’ and the exams system. Our secondary schools are like factories. In fact, perhaps battery farms […]
The problem with a lot of e-learning resources part 2.
In the comments to this morning’s post, Mel calls me out: All of the activities we create are for the teacher to use at the front of the class – and we are conscious never to make the resource the teacher Let me have another go at explaining what I meant. I think this might […]
The problem with a lot of “e-learning” resources
I’ve been reviewing a lot of so called e-learning resources recently and trying to work out my my gut reaction to them tends to be so negative. Recently, I had a lightbulb moment. The problem is that the authors have tried to create something that replaced the teacher. The result is slides or animations with […]
Barriers to teachers sharing resources – copyright
This is a post for #addcym discussion tonight. Follow the #addcym hashtag on Twitter for more info. For me, one of the main barriers to teachers sharing on a public forum is fear of breaching copyright. This has been regularly brought home to us in a county where a school was successfully sued by a […]
6 ideas for classroom displays
I promised something more practical for my next post, so inspired by last night’s #ukedchat, here are 6 ideas for classroom displays 1. Giant mind map I wanted a way for all my year 12 students to work together to create an overview of their first module. 9 sheets of flipchart paper and some sellotape […]