All the SLOP you need

All the resources below are published absolutely free of charge. If you want to say thank you or support me in some other way, click here.  Chemistry *and* physics booklets I have finally finished updating my booklets. The page where...

Useful bits and pieces for evidence informed teaching

Below is a list of things I have read and found interesting and have helped me develop as a teacher. I've been collecting them over the last year or so and tried desperately to keep them in order. This is...

Fixing the roof while the sun is shining: preparing for distance learning

In Lockdown 1.0, like every other school in the country, we moved to distance learning across the course of a weekend. As a department, we set work for students that we thought was appropriate and manageable, and tried to spend...

What makes a good explanation? This and more on the Mr Barton Maths Podcast

You may have noticed I wrote a book recently. I've been shamelessly plugging it everywhere I can, and was enormously honoured to recently discuss it on the Mr Barton Maths Podcast. Craig Barton is a huge edu-hero of mine, and...

Tech for improving your explanations: what and how

When explaining something, it is crucial to: Regulate the flow of information Direct attention It's also important to give your explanations a sense of narrative flow, that you've mapped it out and thought hard about where you are going to...

Golden Silence

There's something magical about a silent classroom. Students are focused, heads are down, pens are busily scratching away. Participation Ratio is high, and you can almost feel the learning in the room. It's not so easy to achieve though, and...

Would you like to sign this open letter? Agitation for exam reform is inappropriate at this time of instability for schools

Dear teachers and school leaders. We are all exhausted. We’ve had two years of incredible instability and cannot wait to get the ship steady and have a period of (relative) plain-sailing. There are a number of people / groups using...

Engagement is not a dirty word

This is my first blog in a while. Apologies for that; as well as struggling a bit with school stuff this year, I've been working on a couple of big projects, one of which you can read about here. If...

The power of “by”

Quick heads-up: this blog uses a lot of technical jargon that you may be unfamiliar with. The jargon springs from the work of Doug Lemov and Paul Bambrick-Santoyo, and if you wish to know more, there is a great summary...

Inside my “classroom” part deux

A little while back I published a blog where I had collected some of the videos I made for Oak during the first Lockdown. Those videos are no longer available, but people seemed to enjoy the post and I got...

The magical lesson rolodex

We did a lot of "reflecting" while I was training to teach. This was often an individual activity - reflecting on a lesson or a training session or whatever - but we also had group reflections, where all the PGCE...