I spent over 3 hours with my trainee today. If you have a trainee, and you aren't spending this kind of time with them, you are setting them up to massively struggle.

The sheer amount of STUFF that someone new to the profession needs to get their head around is wild.

> First, culture. We have to discuss the simple ways that professionals in this organisation act and interact. These things need to be made explicit. From simple things like keeping a tidy desk to complex things like how to apologise if you make a mistake.

>

My first lesson:

How do I start off with new classes? It's taken me a while, but this is now my routine 👇👇

First, make sure
1. A new exercise book is on everyone's seat
2. All chairs are down
3. Work is on the board
4. I have a seating plan

> I stand in the doorway, like I would a normal lesson. When the first few students turn up I say hello and introduce myself before letting them in. When the number hits 6ish, I let one student in. I stay in the doorway, and tell them to go stand here

IT'S FINALLY HERE

We know CPD doesn't work. Teachers don't enjoy it, and say they don't learn from it.

NO LONGER

...because CAROUSEL TEACHING is now officially here 🥳🥳

...bringing you CPD that works and helps you get better at teaching.

Read on 👇👇


What is it?

A comprehensive online suite of resources aimed at helping teachers get better at teaching.

It consists of different courses (e.g. Smashing Your Starter, Behaviour Basics, Advanced Questioning) which come with components like live modelled video explanations:

If you could get a school to be as close to perfect, what would it look like?

Important question, complex answer. But it always starts with leadership.

They have to be everything, everywhere, all at once.

READ ON

> Senior leadership need to be on the gate in the morning. They need to do duty at break + lunch, and see the students out at the end. They need to be on the corridors and in and out of lessons. They need to teach regularly, and do cover. Like this:



>

https://x.com/adamboxer1/status/1218611467299311617

Love starting lessons like this. Spaced retrieval that isn't related to today's lesson, and chosen based on C-Scores, so targeted to areas of student weakness. We then crack out the MWBs to check knowledge that is prerequisite to today's lesson. It's every lesson, so routines are fire. We go through the answers quickly, then at the end I put class scores back in using the sliders, which takes me 30s and means that problem questions will be revisited in homework or another starter.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a strong advocate of mini-whiteboards (MWBs). Brief thread explaining the WHENWHYBY: when are they useful, why are they useful and how do you make them useful: First, a CAVEAT

This is a thread. Not a full blown training session. It contains nuggets, no more. Towards the end of the thread I will signpost more content. If you are planning on delivering training from scratch based on this thread or building policy, please don't.

>

YES we are discussing PowerPoint again!

Ok, ok so first: If someone says

"PowerPoint sucks"

And you say

"It's just a tool, it depends how it's used"

That's right, but it isn't a good argument. Why not? READ ON First, because tools are - almost by definition - designed for different jobs. A screwdriver is good for driving screws, and bad for hammering nails.

If you are hammering nails with a screwdriver and someone says "don't do that", you wouldn't say "it's just a tool, it depends how it's used."

>

Here's a little experiment for you to try that relates to Teaching & Learning and professional development.

First, read the scenario below.

Second, before hitting the following post in the thread, try and predict "what would happen next in this lesson"

Scenario: Here's what happened next:

[This is a real lesson, and these are my real observations (I'm Ms C in this scenario).]

>

Turn and Talk is very popular right now, I see it in most lessons I go to.

HOWEVER, in 95% of cases I watch it and think "that lesson would have been better without it to be honest"

Why? 👇 When there's a T&T in play, I almost always see at least one of:
Minimum 25% of the class just not doing it
Finishing well early
Doing it for something where everyone knows the answer
Doing it for something where nobody knows the answer
Melding into just chatting really quickly

In the past weeks, I've seen a number of people make snide remarks about researchEd and how its presenters and organisers don't produce research. People asking for the papers they've written and stuff like that. This is simultaneously stupid and a fantastic cause for hope.

Read on > It is stupid because researchEd is not an organisation dedicated to producing research. Instead, it is about translating, implementing and disseminating research findings. Let's be clear, the people making this complaint are not serious. BUT

>

A little story about behaviour, relationships, expectations and consequences:

A while back, I taught a really tough Year 11 class. There weren't many of them in the room. Their attendance was sporadic. They hated science, and weren't doing very well.

> The students in there were very challenging. Lots of needs, lots of difficult home lives etc. Not straightforward.

Individually, I got on extremely well with every single one of them. I did my lunch duty near where they hung out and we used to chat and have jokes and stuff. Relationships were strong.

>

Most of the time, homework doesn't work. There are lots of reasons for this, but one biggie is that a key part of the evidence is all too often overlooked. Short thread to explain what that is 🧵👇 There isn't a huge amount of evidence on homework. But the EEF handily summarise what there is, and one of the things that sparks off big questions in my head is this:

Been reading the @RoySocChem's very interesting Science Teaching Survey report and thought I'd snip a few bits out



> rsc.org/policy-evidenc…




If you thought behaviour was a problem in England, wait till you see Scotland and Wales...

>

I need to stop tweeting about Inquiry and research papers about it.

I *know* it doesn't work. I've been in ~500 lessons over the last ~18 months, and in any case when the teacher was not explicit about something, a good number of students then didn't understand that thing. Two quick notes

1. It's worth asking yourself "hm, I wonder what type of student was most likely to not understand that thing"

If you aren't sure, the answer is "probably the one that needed to understand it the most."

Lots of people are now talking about attention and strategies for ensuring students are listening. I think that's a Good Thing, so here are some things that might help 👇👇

First - Ratio. I wrote this based on Lemov almost 4 years ago! Still useful imo!
achemicalorthodoxy.co.uk/2020/02/09/rat… The longer you spend questioning one student, the more likely it is that others in the room will switch off. Questioning the one student is important though, so you need to use techniques that keep everyone else involved.

achemicalorthodoxy.co.uk/2022/05/25/kee…

At TTA for the bulk of our verbal questioning we use a form of Cold Call that involves a) putting the name at the end of the question, and b) targeting specific students. So NOT hands up, NOT calling out, and NOT at random.

How do we target? Based on what?

> This will vary. Bread and butter check for understanding questions* would be targeted to students who tend to take a bit longer to grasp the concepts than others. So, if they get the answer right, we can make an "ok" inference that other students might also have grasped it.

>

My position is that "getting students into a room and working as quickly as possible" is desirable, and mucking about with fancy and unpredictable teacher led activities is inefficient and undesirable.

>

https://twitter.com/adamboxer1/status/1733550410957201586

By all means, do those activities if you think they are great for learning or motivation, just don't do them *then*. If you think that they will be effective when kids are wandering in, getting stuff out their bags, coming late, asking you for a pen, explaining why they don't >

Who are the Jews? Where did they come from? Why do ostensible "Europeans" or "white people" want to live in the Middle East?



A short (hopefully) thread with a historical overview.

>

https://x.com/adamboxer1/status/1721298547914526966?s=20

Just over 3000 years ago, there was a region called Canaan. Lots of tribes lived there. They didn't much like each other. It's (roughly) the northern orange spike here:

Tonight's thread is in response to the number of people who have asked me variations on:

"I have a Jewish friend/colleague. Should I say something to them?"

The short answer is YES ABSOLUTELY

"I'm so sorry for what's going on, are you ok?" is 100% welcome. But please read on: I think it's a fascinating question, because it gets to the heart of some really important cultural understandings. To explore, we start with:

why would a person *not* ask the question, or *not think* to ask the question?

>

Here are a few thoughts on what has happened, and what I think will happen. They are my opinion, and I make no claim to expertise beyond that available to any other layperson.

As ever, honest and open discussion is welcomed, racism, stereotyping and straw-manning is not.

> It is important to distinguish between three (admittedly related) concepts:

Justly going to war
Justly behaving within war
Justly exiting a war

>

Absolutely glorious day today observing three teachers who are in their 4th year of teaching and trained with us and are absolutely SMASHING IT

What things did I really like? First, their confidence and control. They knew exactly what they wanted to do in the lesson and in what order. They were in total command of the subject and how they were going to allow it to flow, and were entirely unflappable and adaptable whatever cropped up.