I can’t see what this is in response to. Anyway, hopefully everyone learns how to have a normal argument.
04.03.2026 19:49
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I can’t see what this is in response to. Anyway, hopefully everyone learns how to have a normal argument.
A very thoughtful thread. Thank you for taking the time to explore and discuss.
Most teachers will, at some point, write lessons they will never teach themselves.
Heads of department do it constantly.
That shift changes everything.
1/6
The White Paper appears as if it will say "expert and effective SEND provision exists but we don't have enough money to fund it so we're providing more money."
If true I think this is a very grave error and will waste billions, not improve anything and probably make things worse.
I would say that phonics was designed to support people not being illiterate, not to inculcate a love of reading.
lol, can we stop melting ice caps!?
It should be enough to ask ‘what about the reservoirs and rivers this destroys?’ Before you even get to the product itself. It’s horrific that this isn’t being put forward before anything else.
If children were more politically active they would be quite pissed to be told that their screen time is “the most urgent public health issue” while the largest measles outbreak since the vaccine sweeps their schools because of conspiracies that the adults in their life believed from social media.
It’s just come through the post! Looking forward to reading, thank you so much 🥳
An utter tragedy. Science solved this problem, but a bunch of charlatans fucked everything up and brought it back
🧵So, what works when teaching reading comprehension in the classroom? To a whole class?
I dedicated a entire chapter of my Phd thesis to exploring the literature on this.
In fact, we do not know a lot about what works when teachers teach, to whole classes.
1/8
there's fierce competition, but this is one of the most stomach-turning things I've read in some time
Yesterday we posted a series of blogs outlining the direction we would like curriculum reform to go in and airing some of our concerns about where it might go. Here's an additional blog focusing on assessment www.englishandmedia.co.uk/blog/curricu...
Lots of people working in English are excited by the prospect of curriculum change now the new NC is being written. We've just published 7 blogs looking at key areas identified for reform, with our hopes for where this might lead. Introduction here 1/7 englishandmedia.co.uk/blog/emc-thi...
Feedback can make lessons look slick or it can make learning more durable. It can’t do both at once.
When feedback is immediate, performance improves but understanding often doesn’t. When we delay, reduce & summarise students are forced to think, judge & remember. open.substack.com/pub/daviddid...
Thank you
What’s the best piece to read on behaviourism?
I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
Stay free
And that last part is the crux of it. Recruitment shortages/funding issues/austerity lead to attempts (I do believe well meaning ones most of the time) to make sure the curriculum is enacted with fewer experts available. It’s not pretty but an indictment of a situation.
Completely agree w this re: rigidity and it comes w tacit deskilling of workforce concerns (making the complex, simple etc) I am very much thinking of English and yes, one cannot boil the fluid navigation of a novel into rinse and repeat steps.
I would say they can be very impactful in English but I also think that without concrete examples it’s very hard to explore what that is. A booklet is presumably a selection of information that you think is useful the students have and by proxy useful for the staff in the department?
It really depends if the booklet goes ‘lesson 1, lesson 2 etc’ then sure, I get the problem. But if I have taught a topic and painstakingly curated my resources, why not put that into a booklet for my department?
I do believe it’s all in the application. Done badly it’s probably robotic, but to have essentially a bespoke textbook of resources you can draw into the lesson as appropriate can really enhance understanding. Also helps on the printing budget!
Completely understand this experience and feeling around it. I would like to add however, that placing some key principles in the same place along with some contextual information that you have been able to vet has really supported the novice teachers in the department.
An aside to the main point of this article: journalists conflating the LLM and the platform is unhelpful. The platform (e.g. ChatGPT, Claude) is powered by the LLM (e.g. GPTX.Y, SonnetZ), but the LLM can tie together different tools (e.g. web search)
🚨 NEW POST 🚨
‘6 strategies to support shared reading for students with SEND’
“Shared reading, done well, may just be one of the most important things that students with special needs do and learn in classrooms...”
alexquigley.co.uk/6-strategies...
As always, useful and insightful.
Lots of valuable tackling of misconceptions and thoughtful processes open.substack.com/pub/sarahbag...
New:
KS3 can be the ambitious years.
open.substack.com/pub/marymyat...
