Innovate My School - Ideas, Practices & Personal Insights

It’s time to reduce teacher workloads!

Teacher workload. One of the biggest challenges the sector is facing. It’s an ongoing battle with teachers expressing that three of the biggest areas that lead to unnecessary workload are marking, planning and data management.

Our approach to reducing (let’s call it re-focusing) workload

It is curious that with all the talk about teacher workload and the recruitment & retention crisis, taking place at the same time is a new phenomenon; the grassroots CPD movement. In towns and cities across the country, teachers are giving up their Saturdays to attend Teachmeets, ResearchEd, and BrewEd events. This is heartening because it confirms that it isn’t hard work that teachers are complaining about, but unnecessary ...

Reducing Planning and Marking Time

Was there ever a time where teachers worked 35-hour weeks? I doubt it. Whether you’re working 40, 50 or 60 hours a week, we all know, it needs to be reduced, as teachers deserve a positive work-life balance.

7 Apps to Engage Parents

Parents play a crucial role in supporting their children’s learning, and levels of parental engagement are consistently associated with better outcomes. Evidence from the Education Endowment Foundation's Teaching and Learning Toolkit suggests that ‘effective parental engagement can lead to learning gains of over 3 months over the course of a year’. However, it can be a difficult and time consuming job to get parents involved in the right way. Thankfully, ...

5 tips on working smarter (not harder)

Is there such a thing as “work-life balance” in teaching?As teachers, we know that it can be difficult to find the off switch. A teacher’s job is never done and that is what makes finding a good work-life balance so difficult. I have always strived for perfection in my job as a secondary mathematics teacher, but I have also always been a sociable and active person. When I ...

11 Revision and Homework Apps

This week testing season officially begins. Edtech products can play an important role in students’ preparation for exams, as well as supporting extending learning beyond the classroom throughout the year. Here are 11 edtech products helping to ease the pressure on students and teachers at what can be a stressful time of year.

Will the introduction of computer science at primary level prepare children for the 21st century jobs market?

In 2018 I changed careers. With a background in business, I’d worked in a number of sectors, always seeking an environment that would promote innovation and creative curiosity. It intrigued me that so few other people sought the same. Even the graduates coming up through the ranks seemed depressingly unimaginative, content to maintain the status quo rather than seeking to innovate it.

Does your teaching make it into students’ long-term memory?

This week thousands of students across the country are sitting down to take their first GCSE exams. Your students need to walk into the exam hall with plenty of knowledge to draw on but, in a packed curriculum across a wide range of subjects, even the most able students can have a hard time recalling the mountain of knowledge needed.So how can you ensure that students retain an in-depth ...

Using iPads in the early years classroom to transform learning

Facilitating rewarding learning experiences for children in a kindergarten classroom to further their understanding is a huge task; a wide range of abilities, different exposures to skills, variety of languages spoken, all contribute to the need to provide high quality, individualised learning activities.This is where the iPad shines as a platform to transform learning to a new level. The range of apps available is overwhelming, however, taking things back ...

The Modern Learning Experience Gap

School leaders are facing greater challenges today than ever before. Schools need to attract, retain, and motivate the best teachers, compete for students in an increasingly competitive market, and provide extraordinary learning within today’s budget realities. Furthermore, all of this needs to be achieved whilst empowering students to shape their own learning journey, preparing them for success in the modern digital world and keeping their parents updated on their ...

Mobile phones in the classroom: friend or foe?

Students using mobile phones in the classroom has always been considered an element of distraction. There are many schools that don't allow mobile phones, and students believe that it's an odd rule. Yes, there was a time when there were no smartphones, and mobile phones were used only for calling and texting purposes. But in the digital era, things have changed: mobile phones are used as a mode of uncovering ...

5 free ways to digitally support your English lessons without increasing your workload

Sorry, not sorry – this mostly involves letting them use their phones in class.I am finding it increasingly so bizarre that phones are not utilised in education more often. And, yes, there is something to be said for having a bit of a digital detox, but phones are an inherent part of everyday life: why are we excluding them from this part?