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What's the best (and easiest) way to teach?

Sep 25, 2018 | Category: Featured

I thought I'd said all I ever wanted to say about group work until, responding to a tweet from an education professor exhorting all teachers to add group work to their teaching repertoires, I unwisely...

#group work #direct instruction #Robert Slavin #PISA #collaborative learning #McKinsey #Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction #whole class instruction

What if everything you knew about mindsets and resilience was wrong?

Sep 24, 2018 | Category: Featured

Here are the slides I use for my talk at researchED Malmö: What if everything you know about mindsets and resilience is wrong? from David Didau The following is the English text of an article I wro...

#Growth mindset #Grit #resilience

Born stupid

Sep 15, 2018 | Category: Featured

If I've learned anything over the last year or so it's that intelligence - whatever we believe that to be[1] - is not innate. Whilst it seems hard to deny that some of our potential for becoming intel...

#intelligence #Michael Oakeshott

A manifesto for closing the advantage gap: my slides from researchED18

Sep 09, 2018 | Category: Featured

The talk I gave a this year's researchED national conference was, I'm afraid to say, shameless promotion for my new book, Making Kids Cleverer. Each of the slides represents an incredibly brief potted...

What's your ambition for children?

Sep 07, 2018 | Category: Featured

Today I listened to Paul Smith, CEO of Future Academies, talk about his ambition for the young people who attend the schools in his Trust. He said he wanted them to be able to go to a 'nice' restauran...

Do children need to love their teachers?

Jul 09, 2018 | Category: Featured

Yesterday, I wrote a post explaining that important as the quality of teaching in a school is, there are other, more important things on which to concentrate. In response, Katharine Birbalsingh, head...

Teaching matters, but there are more important things to get right

Jul 08, 2018 | Category: Featured

As John Tomsett says in his latest blog, "It is generally accepted that the quality of teaching is the most influential factor in determining the rate at which pupils make progress in their learning –...

The best books I've read so far this year...

Jun 12, 2018 | Category: Featured

I normally round up my favourite reads at the end of the year but I've read so many really excellent books so far this year that I decided to put them out there now. Who knows? Maybe you'll consider p...

Why English is not a 'skills based' subject

Apr 27, 2018 | Category: Featured

The idea that English is a skills based subject has become axiomatic. Most English teachers of my acquaintance accept it unquestioningly, as did I until a few years ago. How do we know English is skil...

#English #Daisy Christodoulou

When "balance" goes bad

Jun 28, 2018 | Category: Featured

Balance is an obviously good thing, isn't it? After all, who wants to be unbalanced? "What is it indeed that gives us the feeling of elegance in a solution, in a demonstration?" asked the mathematicia...