Teaching is an unusual profession in so much as you need to be both the architect of the learning and its builder. Architects start with a vision or concept of what a house or building should be whereas builders start with the foundations and build upwards from this solid ground. Continue reading
“To plan or not to plan, that is the question”, with apologies to William Shakespeare on whose 450th birthday I’m penning this blog post. Lesson planning has potentially become a tragedy of Shakespearian proportion due to the amount of time teachers invest in it, sometimes with very little return for their efforts, in terms of improved learning in the class room. Continue reading
I’ve always really enjoyed using graphic organisers in the classroom or as a personal planning tool. Now I often use them when delivering professional development to staff. They help people organise their thoughts and make their thinking very visible with just a glance over their shoulder. The very best of them scaffold students learning from the necessary shallow factual learning towards deeper conceptual learning. Continue reading