The staffroom was quiet after the bell. A colleague sat, head bowed over a new specification from a new exam board. After five years in teaching, she confided, “I am finding it so hard to explain this content. I do not feel like I understand it well enough myself yet.” The pressure of mastering unfamiliar […]
Staff Wellbeing Driven by Professional Collaboration: Finding your Work Best Friends Read More »
As a new school year begins, educators and school leaders are flooded with decisions. From seating plans and assessment systems to curriculum mapping and behaviour routines, the early weeks are charged with action. In this flurry of choices, we often rely on heuristics. There are mental shortcuts or rules of thumb to navigate complexity. Heuristics
Heuristic Traps: A Hidden Hazard at the Start of a School Year Read More »
Adaptive teaching relies on scaffolds. In fact, Alex Quigley has written about how necessary they are as part of the 4 S’s of Adaptive Teaching- Scaffolds, Scale, Structure and Style. Let’s explore further how we can best create and deploy scaffolds that enhance adaptive teaching. We do not want to fall into the trap of
Adaptive Teaching with Magnificiently Designed Scaffolds Read More »
An enriched curriculum enhances the content we teach with depth and complexity. There can be demand that we march through the curriculum, so how do we create opportunities to pause and make linkages? Often we think of curriculum as a mountain to climb, each step we get progressively closer to the top. The route up
Cultural Representation and Powerful Knowledge Read More »
What is the shift from differentiation to adaptive teaching? Alex Quigley made the argument that differentiation is dead, and that the nail in the coffin came from the 2019 Department of Education’s Early Career Framework. It was here that we finally see that differentiation has lost its usefulness as a concept, despite being so ingrained
Adaptive Teaching- Embracing the New Normal Read More »
Cards on the table, in my personal experience I have loathed having classes set by ability. When I had my geography classes determined by science sets (a fluke of my school’s timetable) I was so frustrated by how progress and engagement shifted. The dynamics of my classroom seemed to change for the worse. But my
To Set or Not to Set? Read More »
Let’s say I give a keen geography student a referral to the school’s Model United Nations Club, this seems like a wonderful way to extend their curiosity and development beyond the curriculum. However, there could be a lack of financial ability to pay for trips and conferences, or a lack of time for a student
Chance? The Real Barriers to Enrichment Read More »