Category Archives: Teaching

School leaders and teachers are strapped for time.  What is the best free, fast, flexible CPD out there on assessment? What can we read that has the highest impact in the least time? There are no silver bullets, but here … Continue reading →

Winston Churchill once said ‘success is stumbling from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.’ Looking back now on assessment in our first year at Michaela, I can now see what I was blind to then: we stumbled and blundered. What mistakes … Continue reading →

Is drill demotivating and demoralising, killing motivation and pupils’ ability to think for themselves? Far from demotivating, I’ve found carefully designed subejct-specific practice drills to be highly motivating for the pupils in school, as self-reinforcing cycles of drill and success, … Continue reading →

Knowledge is powerful: it empowers our pupils to achieve in their academic subjects, to understand the world and to live fulfilling lives. It should be one of our highest priorities in our teaching. There are some who take umbrage with … Continue reading →

One of the many things I got wrong in my last school was resourcing. I spent hours making vibrant, colourful slides with plenty of images. I’d work on weekends and late into the evenings creating slides and making them visually … Continue reading →