Category: Conceptual Teaching
Originality For Students
With the need to seek new interpretations of art and life, and the increasing (and righteous?)...
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The Human Reasons Behind a Piece of Work
Students produce pieces for school reasons: write this essay to prove you understand this text....
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Some thoughts on working hard at teaching
Teaching is a tough profession if you are emotionally invested. The institution of education is...
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It has been a while since I wrote
It has been a while since I wrote. My headspace has been in academic study, and distant-study at...
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Creating a healthy academic discourse
Creating a healthy academic discourse in a (relatively!) non-selective classroom with pupils who...
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What do we want to measure in schools and why
I received a thoughtful email from a colleague this week. My (redacted!) reply is worth sharing: ...
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Concept-based Learning PD
Recently we led a concept-based learning day for senior English. Here are some of our ideas,...
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HOW CAN WE CREATE KNOWLEDGE, AMBROSE PIERCE
I’ve been listening the Western Tradition this week whilst I’ve been travelling...
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Dissimilar transfer in concept-based learning- Some thoughts
I question concept teaching models that aim for skill based transfers in my subjects. Such an approach loses the power and relevancy of our discipline. Instead I say we should aim for insights, human interest elements. Between schooling and learning, aim for learning.
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Thoughts about my education and podcasting
Teaching students for fifteen years has allowed me to recognise the particular deficiencies of my...
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ATL IB – Considering concepts in a training task
1 Identity agency, voice, character, narrator, reader, author. ATL: Teaching developed in local...
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A thought: make students write as intensely for a common writing task as they do for an exam.
So much of my training has involved inspiring students for whom there is little intrinsic motivation for study. I have taught in schools where the consequences of this can be visceral. Teaching students like this is a different job, although you cannot separate good teaching from behaviour management (although you can separate behaviour management from good teaching, it seems). If a student trusts you and desire to work (often it is even just because of your persona as a teacher), the enable them to create and analyse at length outside an exam is an ambition not often mentioned.
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