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For three years, now, my school (Reigate School in Surrey) has embraced the move away from traditional written marking and made the move towards more effective, time-efficient methods which largely involve verbal feedback. In October 2021, I spoke at ResearchED Surrey about our school’s move, along with mine and my colleague Michelle Marshall’s involvement in… Read more

In years gone by, before I became interested in applying educational research and cognitive science to my practice, the extent to which I checked for understanding in the moment involved asking the class a question, and taking an answer from one student who happened to have their hand up. And if the rest hadn’t understood,… Read more

I haven’t ‘marked’ a set of exercise books for any of my geography classes in over three years. Before any of you start screaming ‘competency measures’ at me and wondering how I am still in a job, let me elaborate. My school has made the move away from traditional written marking as the main form… Read more

I’d be lying if I said that there was one single influence on my teaching greater than Cognitive Load Theory. It’s allowed me to strip back my teaching and fine tune the elements I’d always done. It’s shifted my focus during the planning and delivery of my lessons away from the resource, or the entertainment… Read more

Three weeks ago, I returned to full time teaching after 16 years of working part time. And what a time to have made my return! When I made the decision back in January, I couldn’t possibly have known what the circumstances would have been eight months later. The elation I felt at being told by… Read more

This fortnight, we are focusing on the Challenge strand of the What Makes Great Teaching at Reigate School model. This week’s blog, from Durrington Research School in Worthing, focuses on one of the key proponents of how challenge for all can be achieved in our classrooms – Robert Bjork. He and his wife, Elizabeth Bjork,… Read more

This fortnight, we are focusing on the theme of modelling. Students in school are constantly in the process of creating pieces of work or performances. However, these do not reach a high standard by magic. As teachers, it is our responsibility to not only deliver content, but to show students how to use and manipulate… Read more

Blog of the week: Scaffolding (1). The focus for this week and next is SCAFFOLDING and is one of the principles in the What Makes Great Teaching model at Reigate School. Scaffolding is an all-encompassing term for the support we provide in class to ensure that all students are given the chance to achieve our… Read more

Blog of the week: Explanation (1) This fortnight’s focus from the What Makes Great Teaching at Reigate School model is EXPLANATION. There’s some further discussion about this element in the Research Pod section, but Barak Rosenshine in his Principles of Instruction (1968) as a result of a wide range of studies into research on how… Read more

Each week at Reigate School, in Surrey, where I am a teacher of geography, I am given the role of writing two short sections of our Teaching and Learning Newsletter. I do not do this in any official capacity, merely as a result of repeated hints and pestering to the powers that be that it… Read more

I love being a teacher. I also love that I’ve discovered a renewed passion for it, after twenty-two years, since I stumbled upon the evidence-informed movement a couple of years ago. And I love the simplicity and logicality it has brought to my teaching. However, there’s one paper in particular that really sparked mine and… Read more

An impromptu post given that it is the first week of the so long-awaited Christmas holidays. A couple of days ago I put out a tweet which was little more than me thinking out loud. However, to date, it has garnered almost 800 likes and several responses. The tweet can be seen below. This tweet… Read more

For the last eighteen months or so, I’ve become absolutely fascinated by cognitive load theory. Slightly too much so if the amount of time I spend on Twitter avidly following other educators’ conversations is an accurate measure. I’m ashamed to say, as a teacher who has just entered their twenty-second year of teaching, that until… Read more

My visualiser has become my absolute prized possession! I cannot remember how I ever used to teach without it! From using it to demonstrate how to use grid references, to live marking a student’s piece of work so that the rest of the class can be made to think about how to improve theirs. It… Read more

A few days ago, I decided I would like to gain a snapshot about the number of schools that are now using verbal methods as their main form of feedback, those that are planning or in the process of moving from written marking to verbal feedback this year, and those schools where SLT have no… Read more