Having two blogs is a bit of a nightmare at times. I tend to use Cupofteaching for anything longer and my Staffrm blog for those shorter pieces. Most of mine tend to be shorter, so I keep drifting towards Staffrm. Not that I blog very often. Anyway, here is the low down on my Staffrm blogging in condensed form – […]
Education
Mail merge: life saver? Personalised feedback for students
I wrote an article on my Staffrm Blog about how I use Mail Merge. I wanted to share that here too. The picture above shows an extra from one of the feedback sheets, automatically populated using Mail Merge to give each student individualised feedback on an assessment, along with their target and historical grades. Here’s the rest […]
The Big Questions – G494 and G495
Every year my A2 students prove themselves to be amazing mathematicians. They struggle with the written aspect, though. I don’t have a perfect solution, but I did draw up ‘The Big Questions’ about G494 and G495. We’ve got them in a random generator and we tackle 2 or 3 each lesson. The general order of […]
TLAB15 ‘All in the Mind’
On Saturday 21st March, Berkhamsted School – and particularly the ever enthusiastic @nickdennis – hosted the third Teaching, Learning and Assessment Conference Berkhamsted (TLAB). It was another wonderful conference with a delectable range of talent on show and I was delighted to be able to attend for a third year running. I wanted to outline a few […]
Scrabble!
I was recently invited to a new platform called staffrm (they are also on Twitter as @staffrm), where the blog posts have a limit of 500 words. It’s great for little snapshots of good practice or reflection and is well worth having a look at. You can follow others to keep up with their posts. It’s nothing really new, but […]
It is #timetoembed
Are there any plans that you had at the start of the year that haven’t yet come to fruition because you’ve been sidetracked? *puts hand up* Are there plans that have come out of events in the first term that you’ve yet to really even think about? *puts hand up* The first term has been […]
What’s the story? #Nurture1415
There are a seriously great bunch of people on Twitter; many of whom have constructed their own reflective #Nurture1415 posts. @Sue_Cowley has collated these here, and @ICTEvangelist has produced some fantastic posters for each here. My post is designed to cover a few professional and personal highs and lows, with a little look into 2015. […]
Science Technicians – do we have the right balance?
The Engine Room As a teacher of science I have always had an admiration for the technical team. They work tirelessly to put lessons together for us, to arrange photocopying, to adapt to all the changes thrust upon them, to work together to make their jobs more efficient (is that even possible?) and to keep the department running. They are […]
FRICCUS! Calculations in Science
I subscribe to a mailing list called CAPT – Connecting Advancing Physics Teachers, for the OCR B specification at A Level – and a regular contributor David Thomas threw in a slightly off-topic acronym: FRICCUS! It came about as part of a discussion around the fact that exam boards are publishing their June 2014 papers far […]
Specialist teachers at KS3?
This post relates to specialist teachers at KS3 for the sciences and whether we should have science teachers teach any of the three sciences pre-KS4 or whether there is an argument to suggest having specialists teaching their subject improves student outcomes. I was unable to find any research on this, so this is all through […]