When it comes to stress, anxiety and worries, our natural instinct is to protect children from them; why? It’s a natural process we need to go through, and an important life skill we need to be able to manage. If we don’t fail, we don’t learn. Part of failing is feeling sad; part of feeling sad is knowing how we can move on and be positive again. It’s important for children to experience a healthy amount of stress and anxiety. If they don’t experience it, how will they learn to manage it?

With so many different assessment measures being used throughout Primary schools, we’re often asked to clarify the difference between them. So, we’ve gone back to the drawing board to provide some quick facts about two key test outcomes: scaled scores and standardised scores (because while both show performance, they aren’t the same thing).

One of the UK’s leading edu-experts went undercover at this year’s Education Show in Birmingham. Here, they weigh in on a few of their free favourites from the event...

In the current climate, cash-strapped schools are still looking closely after their expenses, and may be tempted to look at free resources. As I was strolling around the Education Show earlier this month, a few free apps jumped at me for their brilliance.

Two years ago, Djanogly City Academy in Nottingham were faced with a challenge. They wanted to provide one-to-one support for their pupil premium students, but couldn’t find any local companies who supplied tuition at an affordable price with the scale and flexibility that they needed.

As technological advances are racing in what some believe to be the 4th industrial revolution, they open the door to the most innovative educational technology (edtech), and the Bett Show was an impressive demonstration of this.

Being a Computing coordinator, I am regularly looking for the next great product to bring into school and engage learners. I’ll admit, as a coordinator and self-confessed geek I am regularly a child in a sweet shop! That said, I think it’s important to think about pedagogy first; edtech legend Mark Anderson came up with an interesting model of how to put pedagogy first:

Primary schools across the UK are using an award-winning digital learning service to get pupils ready for this year’s SATs tests. Discovery Education Espresso is helping thousands of teachers by providing dynamic online resources which keep children engaged and make revision fun.

On the outside, Compton appears like any other Primary School in the UK. However, it has long had a reputation locally of doing things just a little bit ‘differently’. Shortly after arriving at the school in 2014, I was offered the chance to visit Brussels and work with the innovators at the Future Classrooms Lab as part of a research project into how technology can be used to redefine teaching in the 21st Century. Details about this project and the final report can be found here. This project introduced me to the world of Google, and it was at this point my view of technology in the classroom was turned on its head.

Being a Computing teacher means that I have to demonstrate and model concepts and topics through the computer regularly. Whether it is displaying to pupils how to open an app or access a program through to skills building knowledge of software tools and techniques, modelling is an essential part of any Computing teacher’s toolkit. In the past, I have found that pupils watching a live demonstration of, for example, changing the background colour of a leaflet they are making or inserting code into a computer program can result in them wanting to revisit the steps taken to achieve this in order for consolidation to happen. This is where Microsoft Stream has made me reconsider how to approach modelling in my lessons.

“I travel for 225 days in a year, and I’ve never felt closer to my child.” - the reaction of a parent my first year using Seesaw.