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, […]
Author Archives: Sarah Larsen
Blog of the week and Research Pods – 4. Modelling.
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 […]
Blogs of the week and Research Pods – 3: Scaffolding.
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 […]
Blogs of the week and Research Pods – 2. EXPLANATION
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 […]
Blogs of the week and Research Pods – 1. RETRIEVAL
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 […]
Refocusing lessons: if we take out the ‘jazz’ does this make them ‘boring?’
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 […]
We’re all in this together…
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 […]
Cognitive Load Theory: how has it changed my teaching?
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 […]
Visualisers: how they can be used to live model, and give immediate verbal feedback.
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 […]
Making the move to verbal feedback in the classroom: what are the barriers to this within schools?
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 […]
