Challenge beyond Bloom’s

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...

What to do after a mock? Assessment, sampling, inferences and more

A common question in the #CogSciSci email group is what to do after students have done an assessment or a mock. Most commonly, people spend a lesson "going over" the paper, where the teacher goes through each question and students make...

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.  I have finally finished updating my booklets. The page where I used to keep...

The generic and the disciplinary: finding a balance

Yesterday, I posted a blog arguing that "teaching and learning" is dead. It generated some really fascinating conversations online, and I wanted to pick up on something a couple of people raised: it may be the case that curriculum comes...

Modelling Curricular Thinking: Inspired by Ben Ranson

I was just settling in for a well-earned evening playing video games on my laptop when I saw this thread by Ben Ranson: https://twitter.com/ThatBenRanson/status/1092498480445227009 The reason why Ben's thread is important is because it models curricular thinking. Most of us...

Core and hinterland: What’s what and why it matters

In 1918, the Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded to a war criminal. In the early years of the 20th century, German scientist Fritz Haber developed a process to artificially synthesise ammonia, a vital component of agricultural fertilisers. A reaction...