LO: write learning objectives and success criteria

As teachers we put all our effort into striving for children to learn the things that we think are valuable but we sometimes overcomplicate the systems that we use to make this happen. Deciding what we want children to learn and the work that they will do to make that happen is the bread and...

The stories we tell | Assessment

Daniel Willingham tells us that stories are psychologically privileged and two of the reasons that it is useful for leaders to tell stories is that they are easier to understand and they are easier to remember. Daniel Coyle tells us that to establish purpose, we should ‘fill the windscreen with stories’ because this can help to build mental models which drive others’...

Questions that a strategic plan must answer

It’s about that time of year when those responsible for drawing up school improvement plans are thinking about the new academic year. I think there are several questions that a strategic plan must answer: 1 | What are our anchoring concepts of school life? 2 | How are we communicating these anchoring concepts to the...

Four quality assurance traps to avoid and four useful ways of thinking

Four traps to avoid 1 | Asking 'How good is it?' 2 | Noticing too late 3 | Thinking we know the absolute truth 4 | Treating culture and climate as separate to educational outcomes Useful ways of thinking 1 | Knowledge building | Seek to understand, not just judge 2 | Collaborative, not individual...

School improvement model | What is it and how might we formulate one?

How do you go about improving your school? This post provides an example school improvement model and seeks to pull out some generalisations that could inform sector wide work, as well as providing advice for school leaders on formulating their own school improvement model. Assumptions It is useful to consider the parameters that we are...

A way of thinking about subject leadership

Subject leadership should not be compartmentalised into the knowledge and actions of individual leaders. Much of the way of thinking advocated in this post involves shared knowledge and collective work for a couple of reasons including workload, accountability and succession planning. Relying on individuals to lead subjects well without great systems or collaborative endeavours leaves...

The stories we tell | SEND

Daniel Willingham tells us that stories are psychologically privileged and two of the reasons that it is useful for leaders to tell stories is that they are easier to understand and they are easier to remember. Daniel Coyle tells us that to establish purpose, we should ‘fill the windscreen with stories’ because this can help to build mental models which drive others’...

The stories we tell | curriculum design

Daniel Willingham tells us that stories are psychologically privileged and two of the reasons that it is useful for leaders to tell stories is that they are easier to understand and they are easier to remember. Daniel Coyle tells us that to establish purpose, we should ‘fill the windscreen with stories’ because this can help...

A way of thinking about culture and climate

My mental model, not yours Culture and climate cannot be separated from the more general idea of school leadership and there are all sorts of models for school leadership, each professing to capture the reality of it. When people come up with these models, that is what they are doing - trying to represent reality....

Rethinking the foundation subjects

The persistent challenges of curriculum design, assessment rationale and the complexity of school life continue to make the job both challenging and rewarding. Michael Tidd’s post then prompted me to clarify some thoughts on the foundation subjects. https://twitter.com/michaelt1979/status/1575540605400518656?s=46&t=A1NBgleLkYX4TZdy3GjGuQ My experience of the foundation subjects in a number of schools both lead and observed is that...