Ramble#19: Comprehend this! Reading is not a ‘skills’ based subject – Part 1

What follows is going to be a written up version of my previous researchED talk. First disclaimer. This talk operates under the assumption that the pupils in your class have mastered word recognition, which arguably is a skill. What is a skill? When we look at the etymology (the history of the word) of the …

Ramble#18: Can AI help you?

Over the last few weeks there have been many headlines about a chatbot called ChatGPT. Depending on where you have seen it, it has either been hailed as a game changer for students and that schools are not ready for such a tool, or that teachers will shortly be out of a job. I will …

Ramble #17: Introducing Improper Fractions & Mixed Numbers

I am sure there will be very little new to here to most; I know in the past I have been guilty of teaching the conversion of improper fractions to mixed numbers and vice-versa as something very procedural with very limited conceptual understanding of what is happening. It was not good enough for everyone in …

Ramble#16: What should every secondary school teacher should know about early reading?

This quick blog comes from off the back of a question that was asked during the EdClubhouse where a theme drawn out from discussion involving the panel and audience looked at teacher training in reading. Clearly there should be a difference in what this training looks like for teachers entering either the primary or secondary sector …

*Guest Post* – A Shit Blog.

I was recently contacted by a member of the the Twitter community who asked me if I would host a blog post on my blog page. Normal disclaimers apply. What you will read below is the thoughts and opinions of the post writer and are not my own etc etc. Disclaimer: I am well aware …

Ramble #15 – ‘But where is the challenge?’

The title of this blog is in inverted commas for a reason. It was a common question asked of me after a book look or a lesson observation. After a brief conversation the final remark would be something on the lines of, ‘Make sure you can see it in their books.’ This probably being said …

Ramble #14 – Reading Comprehension – More Than Just Background Knowledge

I have long been acutely aware that my teacher training did not prepare me well for the teaching of reading. By reading, I do not just mean the decoding aspect (I do not think many people mean that when they talk about reading) but rather the whole process outlined in Scarborough’s famous reading rope. While …

Ramble#13 A Place of Pirates in KS1?

This is a blog that I have been meaning to write for a while after taking some inspiration from the fabulous Victoria Morris (@MrsSTeaches) and her blogs on curriculum thinking and after seeing that Jon Hutchinson (@jon_hutchinson_) needed some convincing that ‘Pirates’ is a worthwhile topic to study at KS1. Should they be taught in …

Musings on feedback

As part of my work, I was tasked to find and synthesise research on feedback. Below is what I have found and may make for some interesting reading for some or be useful to direct members of SLT to if they have not yet embraced a limited/no marking policy. Some appendix items have been removed …

Ramble #12 The Elaborate & Restricted Code of Teaching & Learning

Some of  you may recognise the elaborate and restricted code as part of the work done by the sociologist Basil Bernstein. Stephen Littlejohn in Theories of Human Communication (2002) argues code, “refers to a set of organising principles behind the language employed by members of a social group” (p.278). For the purpose of this blog post, …