Alex

Explicitly teaching vocab at the start of a unit in English, and then continually revisiting it, has made a world of difference. Focused on application and understanding, rather than researching definitions. (Not everyone has sentence stems but these work well!)

I keep rereading the hindering learning section wherever I go from The Reading Framework.

Thrilled to finally have a copy of this. Flicked to a random page to find a video of the amazing @Jenbrimming - so I know it’ll be a fantastic read. @Doug_Lemov

I’d say we generally overestimate what students can do when introducing new material by not breaking it down enough, which penalizes struggling students. But we *underestimate* what students can do in terms of their behavior in class, which, again, penalizes struggling students.

Brilliant podcast on effective CPD. Adam’s knowledge is unparalleled and Craig’s deep-dive podcasts absolutely fly by.

If you're a secondary school leader, jump at this opportunity:

Doing this quiz with my class showed me that we need *far* more lessons on run-on sentences when I take them into Year 5. It's well worth doing this quiz with any KS2 class, I think.

No, they can’t learn all of that in one lesson. No, that can wait until tomorrow. No, that’s not entirely relevant to the topic. No, that’s sort of an edge-case that will serve to confuse more than help them. A lot of teaching really is just an exercise in restraint.

All you can do, imo, is read widely and often with the children and teach them in a way that gets them to enjoy it, even if it is just in those moments. The constant pursuit of embedding a culture for reading for pleasure is fruitless, as it won't work for everyone, just like...

Probably the best writing CPD you will ever attend:

The Writing Framework is a really useful read. Lots to reflect on. Going to give my Year 4s this quiz from @daisychristo tomorrow and really, really hope that our 'endless' work on run-ons has paid off...

The Writing Framework has just been published, and I'm pleased to have been part of the sector panel to help produce this important document. I'm optimistic that the framework will help leaders to further develop the teaching of writing in their schools gov.uk/government/pub…

I invented a new teaching technique called Productive Success, where the kids are given information that is appropriate for their level of prior knowledge and the resulting responses are 80-90% correct, boosting motivation and including kids that find learning most challenging.

Just finished reading this - it's a fantastic, insightful look into effective primary classrooms, and I can't recommend it enough! Would love for this to become a series if @johntomsett is up for continuing his tours around the country's classrooms.

Looking forward to reading this, @johntomsett! The sector should be trying to learn from each other as much as possible - the @Steplab_co documentary was great earlier this year but there’s so much scope for more!

NEW POST Systematic inclusion: Is literally everyone thinking, talking, practising, learning? How much does it matter to you. teacherhead.com/2025/06/25/sys…

Teachers are frequently advised to replace closed questions with open ended ones. This is often not very good advice. Not only are there times teachers must assess factual yes/no knowledge, open ended questions are often a characteristic of meandering lessons with no objective.

The most common teaching mistakes are things like: presenting too much not enough practice not gathering responses moving on too quickly not securing attention no examples I’m struck by how much attention we devote in education to stuff that distracts from these fundamentals.

Nothing beats good old hard work. Schools must defend knowledge-curricula, traditional exams & teachers must understand cognitive load theory to prevent being seduced by AI trends influencing schooling.