Many will know Kate Jones for her popular classroom resources, or from her being a member of the original TMHistoryIcons team. Having known Kate for a while, we wanted to share her story of being an expat school leader, having traded in North Wales for the United Arab Emirates...
Modern teachers are faced with large class sizes where students have a very wide range of abilities and styles of learning. As any teacher can tell you, it's hard to deliver tailored support when workloads are high and you are tasked with teaching 30 students at a time. This presents a challenge for schools: how can they ensure that each student is receiving the support they require within the framework of ...
Coding has been around for a while now, yet how far have we really come in terms of teaching and learning? There still appears to be a certain nervousness among teachers when incorporating it into lessons, perhaps stemming from a lack of knowledge, skills or resources. Despite this, with a little time and practise, coding can be quite an easy task to weave into classroom activities. So let’s explore ...
E-safety is vital for pupils from the age of four. From this age the vast majority of children in our country are having regular access to the internet via tablets or smartphones. Everything and everyone has an ‘app’, and creating apps and games for children is big business. How do we protect our children in a developing, potentially unsafe, world? How do we future-proof our children in a digital world?
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 ...
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, ...
Coming to a classroom near you… Virtual Reality (or simply VR), the immersive learning experience that enables students to see, feel, and smell the past! Sound a bit futuristic? Well, VR is here to stay. Various incarnations have been used in films, medicine, science, art, leisure, and now it’s making its way into schools.
With the holiday season done and dusted, our attention for the most part turns to diary planning for the year ahead. For those working in the education sector, particularly those involved with, or interested in educational technology, the Bett Show will perhaps be the highlight of the first month of the year.
A TeachMeet comes in many guises. The first I attended was a gathering of ten teachers in a classroom. The second had an audience of eighty and a reception on board HMS Victory in Portsmouth. However, both gatherings were defined by the very simple concept of teachers sharing ideas and simultaneously building a professional learning network (PLN). Presenters can sign up for a two, five or seven minute presentation on ...
This blog is an overview of a presentation that I delivered at a Lead Meet event in June 2016. The end of my first senior leadership post has provided the best opportunity to reflect upon the most relevant things that I have learnt. In this role, it became apparent that the skills and attributes that helped me reach this particular point were not necessarily the ones that would enhance my skills / ...
Do you feel powerful?
Because the modern, effective school middle leader is powerful, an incredibly powerful member of the school community. Not powerful like Darth Vader is powerful. I’m not suggesting you wave your hand to magically make minions do your evil bidding. I’m talking about being the powerful agent for change that the role of middle leader has become. In your hands, you have the power to ...
