odeneal.blog

Category: Teaching Blogs

  • What’s next?

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    aeodeneal
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    In April 2024, I made the decision to transition out of teaching, and I finished my roles at my school in July 2024. The main reason for this is the desire to strike a better balance between my work life and my personal life; whilst I didn’t go into teaching expecting an easy ride, knowing…

  • Assessing progress at Key Stage 3

    Assessing progress at Key Stage 3

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    aeodeneal
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    This post summarises the system I used to analyse KS3 data at my school so that I (and class teachers in my department) could intervene with students where appropriate, and report to parents about their child’s progress.

  • What makes effective whole-class feedback?

    What makes effective whole-class feedback?

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    aeodeneal
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    I recently delivered a short talk as part of our whole school INSET on effective feedback. In my section, I talked specifically about how to use misconceptions and common errors to provide whole-class feedback. In this post I will outline the points I made to explain this with some examples for Physics and Sociology. Both…

  • Making life easier as a teacher

    Making life easier as a teacher

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    aeodeneal
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    There are a few things that I routinely do at work that make my life inside the classroom just that bit easier. In this post I’ll outline a couple of these. Hopefully they’ll be useful for a new ITT or ECT! Lesson templates I know that there’s debate on Twitter about whether using PowerPoints are…

  • Scientific literacy 3: writing about science

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    aeodeneal
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    This post is the third in a series about improving the scientific literacy of our pupils. So far I’ve written about use of vocabulary and embedding additional reading into the curriculum for KS3. Why is scientific writing important? As I’ve said before, literacy is important beyond any one school subject’s curriculum. It can have a…

  • Scientific literacy 2: reading in science

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    aeodeneal
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    This post is the second in a series about methods of embedding scientific literacy into our curriculum, so it becomes a more well-practised skill for our students. Whilst my focus is primarily on KS3, I have also created a wider reading list for our KS5 Physics pupils, and have started setting the odd literacy-related task…

  • Strategies for improving scientific literacy

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    aeodeneal
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    In January I was appointed as the KS3 Science Coordinator at my school on a maternity cover basis, as part of the cover for our Second in Science who’s on maternity leave. This means I have until Christmas 2022 to make an impact, so I want to make sure I’m successful. My focus for the…

  • Using metacognition in the classroom

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    aeodeneal
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    A couple of months ago I ran a workshop for the staff at my school on using metacognition in the classroom. The big thing to take away from it was that it’s not something we can teach once, and then leave. We need to embed strategies in our lessons that work because of metacognition. It…

  • Leading the implementation of a new KS3 curriculum

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    aeodeneal
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    I think we’d be hard pushed to find a science teacher that disagrees about the importance of KS3. Whilst there aren’t any public exams like in KS4 or KS5, one could argue the most successful students in those later stages are those who had the best foundation in science. This means not only simply knowledge…

  • Maximising Progress in KS5 Physics

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    aeodeneal
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    Prompted by a round of ChatPhysics on Twitter recently, I thought this could be an opportunity to write about ways that we maximise progress at our school, and some methods I want to try from some other Twitter Physicists. Feedback This links to another post I’ve written, relating to the college-wide project I’m running introducing…