Category: Teaching Blogs
-
Learning conversations with KS5 students: independent target setting
Context for the project This academic year (2021-22) I’m leading a college-wide research project at my school aimed at improving independent target setting (and hopefully therefore progress) with KS5. The main aim is for students to lead conversations with their teachers setting their own targets based on how they’ve done in an assessment, and then…
-
What is self-determination theory, and how might it help me in the classroom?
Sometimes I’m reminded (either through Twitter, day-to-day conversation, or another way) that a fair few teachers don’t see much (any) value in the use of educational research. Whilst it is true that a lot of it is very contextual, I don’t agree that it can’t be helpful. What is unhelpful is educational research that is…
-
Marking and feedback for workload reduction
It’s no secret that teacher workloads are generally pretty high. Those who haven’t been in a school since they were in school might suggest it’s a cushty 9-3 job with tonnes of holiday. The holidays are nice, sure, but I tend to spend most of my holidays working on research stuff, and I usually have…
-
Opinion: Ideas for the retention crisis
In this blog I’ll give my two cents on the teacher recruitment and retention crisis. Part of me wonders who will care what my opinion is, given that I’m a third-year teacher with little (read: no) experience in any leadership capacity, but this is my blog, so I’ll share my opinion anyway. Workload One of…
-
Imposter syndrome
Imposter syndrome isn’t a new thing. It’s clear from my Twitter timeline that it’s far more common than a lot of people think it is, and I’m certainly in that group. In this post I’ll talk a bit about where I’ve experienced imposter syndrome, and how I’ve tried to overcome it. Experiencing imposter syndrome as…
-
Training students for practical work
There are loads of reasons why training students for practical work is important. The biggest of these, in my opinion, is so that they’re more engaged in the scientific process, and know how it works. Clearly, scattering some iron filings round a magnet doesn’t match professional lab research. However, the general process is pretty similar…
-
Why I hate formula triangles
For one of my PGCE interviews, I was told to prepare a lesson plan for a physics lesson (which made sense since I was applying to the PGCE Physics with Maths). I figured I’d link the two, and do a lesson on speed-distance-time calculations. I remember at school some people using formula triangles (often misnamed…
-
Lessons from Lockdown
Lockdown had its positives, but it also had its negatives. I’m having a look at what’s going to go, and what’s going to stay.
odeneal.blog 