A little while back, I wrote about mock exams, assessment theory and advice following tests. You can read that post here, and I recommend you do before trying this one out. To summarise, I argued that: Tests are about sampling... Continue Reading →
What makes one question hard and another one easy? When I trained, Bloom's taxonomy was everywhere. Personally, I haven't really paid it much attention in quite a while, but I was reminded recently that it is still used extensively in... Continue Reading →
I've written before about a simplified model to summarise the cognitive load that a student feels during a particular task: If you are unfamiliar with the model, please read about it first as it will help you a lot in... Continue Reading →
The emotional, physical and mental exhaustion of working with a bottom set year 11 class has its own characteristic flavour. You feel frustration at students who have switched off, annoyance at students who disturb others’ learning, fear for students who... Continue Reading →
For me, booklets have been a game-changer. The combination of lean explanations, worked examples and plentiful practice have made sure my lessons run smoothly and student productivity is maximised, and I wrote about how I use them day-to-day here. This... Continue Reading →
Whenever you move schools, you are inevitably bombarded with new policies, cultures, norms, habits and calendar events. At my last school, one such event was the DEAR day: drop everything and read. Someone from the English faculty picked a short... Continue Reading →
It is a truth universally acknowledged that however daft a teaching idea is, as soon as you point this out online someone will tell you that it works just fine for them. Inevitably, you will be told that it is... Continue Reading →
Booklets have been a massive gamechanger for me. They've vastly reduced my workload, improved the quality of my students' output, helped me think more deeply about my subject and improved my pedagogical content knowledge. I now have booklets for the... Continue Reading →
Thinking deeply about curriculum is new to most of us. For a long time, we've focussed a lot more on the how than we have on the what. Recent changes in mood have been revelatory to me and, I imagine, many others.... Continue Reading →
A Chemical Orthodoxy 